


Side Effects of Marriage Include

by rustyliver



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Mr and Mrs Smith AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:51:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustyliver/pseuds/rustyliver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Remember what Dr Sydney said? Use your words.”  </p>
<p>Shaw pushes the covers off her and stomps towards the light switch. Turning off the light, she heeds her wife’s very helpful suggestion,</p>
<p>“Happy?”</p>
<p>“You make me happy every second of my life, dear.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is. There are some edits but none that changes the story.

“How’s the wife?”

She growls. “Probably on some yacht playing her new toy.”

She really doesn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not when she’s working. Work is priority over her cheating wife.

It’s a sham of a marriage anyway.

“You’re not going to do anything about it?”

“Couples counselling,” she replies, nonchalant as she picks up the file next to him.

“Huh,” he exhales. “Unexpected.” But before she could glare at him, he adds, “Good for you. Not many people can admit when they have problems, let alone seek help for it.”

He doesn’t know it was sanctioned by the government. Seriously. The government is footing the bill for her therapy sessions. Cole thinks it’s all legitimate, and she never cared to correct him. It’s how she knows her marriage is plausible; if the person closest to her can’t tell, no one else should.

“Enough about that,” she says, flipping the file in her hand open. “Tell me about the new number.”

 

 

She met Caroline at a bar in Bali.

Shaw had just finished a mission and was having some down time when some local cops barged in. From the little bits of Indonesian she had picked up, she gathered that they were looking for an American travelling alone.

But they all looked past her. Without hearing her accent, they can’t tell where she was really from.

It’s a relief—not that she wasn’t prepared for a fight, but she would much rather finish her drink.

And that’s exactly what she was doing when suddenly the officers were yelling again. So she turned, one hand reaching for her sidearm, to have a look at what had restarted the commotion.

It was a tall woman, breezing through the chaos like she had no clue that she was the cause. Or maybe she did because when an officer approached her, she just held a hand up and kept walking. Befuddled, the officer let her pass.

Shaw stood up, tightening her grip on her gun, when it was clear that the woman was heading towards her.

“Hey, babe,” she whispered softly to Shaw’s ear, and Shaw isn’t quite sure why she let the woman get that close.

Another officer stepped forward, eyes on Shaw, and pointed towards the woman.

“Teman?” he asked.

She shook her head, and suddenly there were ten guns pointed at her.

“Officer, you misunderstand,” the woman said. “My girlfriend’s Indonesian vocabulary is quite limited. I am with her.” She looked at Shaw and her hand had somehow found its way to the Shaw’s neck, lightly caressing it. “Right, babe?”

“Friend?” the officer asked Shaw. 

“Something slightly more,” the woman offered, winking with both her eyes, but the officer had his eyes trained on Shaw, searching for confirmation.

The woman turned away from the anxious cops, her cheek so close that it was rubbing against Shaw’s, and whispered a quiet, “Please.”

Her tone was desperate and Shaw thought there was no way she’s the person they were looking for.

So she released her gun. “Yup,” she nodded.

The woman offered to buy her a drink after the cops had left. “Thanks for playing along,” she had said, tearing out a stray paper napkin she found on the bar into tiny little pieces.

When Shaw asked how she knew that she was a fellow American, the woman just chalked it up to a lucky guess. The bar was the closest place she could duck into and Shaw was the first person she saw.

It turned out she was just a nervous backpacker with a hell of a poker face.

 

 

Shaw stares at the man sitting opposite her, who is trying to school a neutral expression as she looks back.

She can smell his fear.

Caroline grips her arm, digging her nails into it, and Shaw flinches. She clears her throat, but maintains her scowl.

“What was the question again?”

In the periphery, her wife is smiling tightly with her nails still in Shaw’s flesh, and they will probably remain there until Shaw decides to stop scaring the therapist. It’s a good thing her wife has always kept her nails trimmed.

Doctor (Shaw heaves a sigh. _She_ is a doctor. He is _not_.) Sydney smiles. “How many times do you have sex in a week?”

Caroline’s face is flushed, and her nails sink deeper into Shaw’s arm as if punishing Shaw for making the ‘doctor’ repeat the question. “Is that on a scale from 1 to 10?” she asks. “As in 1 for very little and 10 for a lot?”

“But what is a lot, exactly?” Shaw interjects, pulling her arm away from Caroline. “I mean it seems like our neighbors do it 24/7. Is that 10? ‘Cause that just seems excessive.”

“Just, whatever you’re comfortable with,” Dr Sydney says, sneaking a glance at his watch.

Let’s see.

On Monday, she twisted her knee.

On Tuesday, she was stabbed in the back.

On Wednesday, she may have had a concussion.

And yesterday, she’s already asleep when her wife came home.

So…

“Are you including weekends?”

 

 

“Can you switch off the lights?”

Shaw grimaces. She was just up five seconds ago. Would it have killed Caroline to ask her then? Actually, why didn’t she do it herself? Her majesty climbed into bed only a second ago, _after_ Shaw did.

“I did it yesterday,” Shaw says, barely keeping her growl inaudible.

“Well, you’re closer, _honey_.”

The affectionate pet name only amplifies Shaw’s growl, which doesn’t escape her wife’s attention who unfailingly derides her for it,

“Remember what Dr Sydney said? Use your words.” 

Shaw pushes the covers off her and stomps towards the light switch. Turning off the light, she heeds her wife’s very helpful suggestion,

“Happy?”

“You make me happy every second of my life, _dear_.”

Comments like that used to be taken in jest in the Shaw household—normally by Sameen of the Shaws, rather than Caroline—but nowadays it sounds plains sarcastic, sometimes even snide.

Under the shadow of her bedside lamp, Caroline directs a self-satisfied smirk at Shaw, then switches it off, turning the room pitch black. A moment later, a loud expletive echoes throughout the room, but Caroline remains stationary under the sheets, not even flinching when Shaw climbs into bed.

It’s only an hour later when Shaw has supposedly fallen asleep that she is pulled into an embrace and a hand settles just above her knee, rubbing it gently.

 

 

It wasn’t always so hard.

It used to be easy, even when Shaw vehemently wished for it to be the opposite.

After Bali—after they had spent a night together, their first and last in Shaw’s mind because in her line of work, attachments are a leading cause of death—they parted ways amicably.

But before they did, the question of what next was asked (by whom, Shaw can’t recall).

Shaw’s short answer was, “Wherever I’m needed.”

Which was vague enough as not to inspire another query for details and consistent with her cover as a volunteer in the Red Cross.

Caroline’s response matched hers in brevity. Eyes filled with excitement, she said, “Wherever life takes me!”

It was clear that neither of them expected to see each other again, or even wanted to.

But a few months later, Shaw, who was wading through rush hour in bustling Shinjuku on the trail of a Number, heard her name called;

“Sameen!” which wasn’t a very common name in Japan so there was small, if any, likelihood of it being a case of mistaken identity.

She instinctively turned and found Caroline, eyebrows raised, reflecting Shaw’s surprise even though she was the one who called out.

She had chuckled. “I didn’t think it would be you. I thought...” she trailed off, her breath unsteady as if she had been running.

They stood facing each other, wordless, as countless strangers’ shoulders rubbed against theirs but neither of them seemed to notice it, like there were under some spell that stunned them into an unbreakable eye contact.

Finally, Shaw, who started feeling ridiculous, took the first step forward, bumping into a woman who seemed to think the world will end if she can’t get to where she was headed. The woman yelled something unpleasant as she resumed chasing her destination.

But Shaw didn’t seem bothered by what she was certain a very ugly curse word—she just took another careful step forward, taking her time to get to her destination. Unlike the woman, she is free from the belief that her world would end if she didn’t get there soon enough, because to her, it already had.

The world around her, it seemed, had melted away, and there were only two people left in existence;

She, and Caroline.

As soon as she was close enough, Caroline eagerly grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. The quick tug somehow broke the spell, and the world faded back in. She began to notice the rushing crowd again and the Number she had lost, but they seemed to float right to the back of her mind when Caroline eventually pulled away from her.

Caroline opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was somehow stalled for a moment before it came out as a hushed, “Hi...”

Shaw exhaled a chuckle and replied in kind, “Hi.”

It immediately dawned on her that she was fucked, but the thought was as urgently followed by a careless _if_.

_If_ you see her again.

She was convinced there won’t be a third ‘last night’.

She was so wrong.

After Shinjuku, there was Cape Town. Then there was Janakpur.

They were crossing and hopping continents, but somehow they always managed to find each other.

They weren’t even trying.

Now all they do is try, but it’s like they are both so lost that they can’t find their way to each other.

(And apparently more so when they are under the same roof.)

 

...

Cole apologizes again.

“I really thought we were the good guys.”

“When?” Shaw asks. She can’t help the sneer that comes out at her question mark. “When I shot Daniel Aquino in the middle of him begging for his life?”

Cole doesn’t answer, but his regret still reeks and Shaw has to take slow shallow breaths to avoid taking in too much of the smell.

“I thought at least,” he says two songs later, his breath hitching, “at least we weren’t the bad guys either.”

She used to think it was adorable, the way he sees things in black and white. Murder bad. Save lives good. That sort of thing. So even though he mourned the lives they (she) took, he never lost sleep over it.  Still, there were times—always before, not after—when his resolve shook, and the black and white blend into grey. Whenever she saw that tremble, she would leave him in the van.

Of course something bad happened the one time she didn’t.

What the hell was he thinking jumping in front of a bullet like that?

 He said it was for her, and she rolled her eyes.

Luckily, she had heard the quick and quiet footsteps just outside the door and managed to get both their bodies out of the line of fire at the very last second.

“Stop thinking too much,” she tells him. “You’ll only run out of blood faster.”

She’s not joking. If he keeps worrying, his heart rate is going to keep racing and that means more blood flowing out of the hole in his leg.

Her warning shuts him up, but she can tell that his brain is still running at a mile a minute.

A song later, he speaks again.

“Who do you think that guy in the suit was?”

“Someone Control sent.”

“But you saw the bodies on our way down. He can’t be with them,” he tells her and she sees where he’s headed as clear as the road in front of them. “You shouldn’t have shot him.”

But she still looks at the rear view mirror to check if he was being serious.

As expected, he is.

Shaw exhales, feeling every bit of the exhaustion she’s trying to delay. “He wore a vest.”

“You sure?” he asks, hopeful.

It makes her want to smack him like he’s one of those old CRT TV to clear up the static in his brain.

“Never been surer,” she lies. “Now shut up.”

 

 

Cole doesn’t shut up. Sure there have been pauses here and there, but his brain doesn’t stop which means his mouth can’t either.

Even as Shaw pours alcohol over his wound.

“You know what’s a nice sedative?”

“What?”

“A story.”

“This is not bed time and I’m not your mommy.”

“You said it yourself, I need to stop thinking about…” he has that pathetic introspective look again. It’s only shaken off when she pokes the first hole in his skin. “Take my mind off it,” he hisses. “Please.”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, I don’t carry around story books with me.”

“Tell me about Caroline. You don’t talk about her much.”

“No.”

“Come on, Sam. I just took a bullet for you.”

 

 

Where does she even begin?

She had the same difficulty when Dr Sydney asked her to explain her marriage.

It would have been a much easier question to answer if it was something stupid she did on the spur of the moment in some chapel in Vegas.

But no, that wasn’t what happened.

Their wedding was beautiful (or so she was told) and expensive and had five hundred guests in attendance.

The proposal, however, was a lot less grand and completely unplanned.  

They were in an airport, at Caroline’s gate. Shaw had bought a ticket just to see her off.

Caroline had kissed her for the third time, a light peck on the lips, then clung to Shaw’s arm like her gate isn’t closing in five minutes.

“Till next time, huh?”

Neither of them knew when that will be but based on their luck, it wouldn’t be too long.

The flight attendant was bellowing the last call into the speakers when Shaw had her oh so brilliant thought, and she blurts it out before she could even finish thinking it.

“Do you want to stop doing this?”

 Caroline’s eyes darted downwards, her grip on Shaw loosened.

“No, I don’t mean,” Shaw quickly added. “I mean, do you want to stop meeting accidentally and make us more intentional?”

Caroline smiled. She brought her loosened hold down Shaw’s arms towards her palms and tightened it again.

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

Shaw chuckled. “I think we are way past dating.”

“True,” Caroline said, a playful frown creasing the space between her brows. “Move in?”

Shaw jutted out her lower lip. “You’re not taking me seriously.”

Caroline pulled her close again after having such a hard time pulling away, and the flight attendant who was standing three feet away from them cleared his throat.

“Last call for flight AF743,” he repeated into his mic.

“I’m taking you very seriously,” Caroline said, touching their foreheads together.

“Forget it,” Shaw mumbled. “You’re gonna miss your flight.”

But she can’t seem to pull away either.

“No, tell me,” Caroline insisted, seeming to sober up from her amusement.

 “I…” Shaw had felt silly.

“Tell me or I’m gonna miss my flight.”

“Or you can not miss your flight and we’ll talk about this next time?”

Caroline pulled away, an eyebrow raised. “Sameen…”

“Fine,” Shaw exhaled. “I just, I guess I want more of a sense of permanence between us. I want to say next time and actually mean it. I want to say next time and not have you have that look.”

“What look?”      

Shaw untangled one hand from Caroline and slid her thumb over Caroline’s forehead and brought it down to Caroline’s cheek.

“This look. The one where you’re looking at me like it’s the last time you’ll ever see me and the little tiny ‘…right’ just here,” she wiped her thumb on the corner of Caroline’s mouth, “when I say next time.”

“And you have a solution?”   

Shaw shook her head. “Not really.”

“We can sync calendars if you want?”

 Shaw laughed.

“Now who’s not taking who seriously?” Caroline huffed but some of that left over amusement from before surfaced in her eyes.

“Sure,” Shaw said. “But maybe something a little more concrete that doesn’t just take unticking a box to disappear.”

“Like a promise?” Caroline asked.

Shaw nodded. “Maybe something a little more serious than a pinky promise and a little less sillier than a blood oath.”

“Something that have witnesses and a figure of authority to make it legally binding?”

“That’s weirdly specific but yea—” wait. “Oh.”

And the amusement just poured out Caroline by the gallon. Her body shook so hard that Shaw can’t help but be infected by her mirth, and Shaw’s lips curled up just slightly.

“The thing is,” Caroline said when she finally settled down. “I can’t think of a reason to say no.”

And neither did Shaw.

At least at the time.

 

 

Three weeks later, she was hanging on a meat hook, one hand holding on to it to relieve some of the pain in the other hand which the hook was impaling.

It wasn’t the first time, and definitely not a reason to cross matrimony out of her life list.

No, that was the threat that came later.

Her interrogator was one of those idiots who needed to narrate his process for intimidation’s sake. It bored Shaw so much that she thought she might die from the boredom before the blood loss. She prefers silence (unless it’s the captive screaming) when interrogating. She found that when the captive is left wondering what’s next, the anxiety would accelerate the fear, causing it to surface much faster than they know what to embrace.

The one good thing about a chatty interrogator is that they tend to gloat, and gloating leads to them blurting out pertinent information about their plain. Sometimes, that’s useful.

Other times, it’s a pain.

Especially when they go into a monologue about their method; like how he would try very hard not to kill her but sometimes things happen, and she should stop him before he went too far because if she didn’t, it would just make him angry.

She had snorted. She tried really hard not to, but his interrogation technique really sucked. You don’t remind your captive of the future that they wouldn’t have because chances are, your captive is all ready to go. You remind them of the present, how much suffering they are in and how they can’t stand it.

“You think it’s funny?” he asked her, carving a line down one of her shoulder blades. “Let me ask you, do you have anyone important?”

Shaw laughed. It hurt, and hurt even more when the interrogator’s knife sink deeper into her flesh, but it was worth seeing his face when he went to choose his next too. He was trying to keep calm and maintain his sinister look, but Shaw can tell that he was losing his cool from the way he dropped his knife on his tray of torture toys.

“Is it family?” he asked, taking a brief look at Shaw before picking up a small saw. “No? Is it someone special? Like a boyfriend?” he turned again to face Shaw, checking for a reaction. “Oh, a girlfriend then?” he asked, smiling. He turned back to his tray to replace the saw with what looked like a fork with very sharp points. “A girlfriend. Wow, how do you find the time? This job is really killing my social life.”

“By being good at my job,” Shaw spitted out along with some blood that’s been gathering up in her mouth. She wondered what gave her away. Was it that little tick she felt near her eyes?

The interrogator snickered. “Clean up the blood, you’re actually quite the looker. I bet your girlfriend isn’t too bad looking. But even if she’s ugly, it won’t matter. A fuck is fuck. ” He turned his back on his tray and approached her, smirking smugly. “I will give her the best night of her life, then the worst wake up call.”

Big mistake.

That was all the distance she needed to get her feet on his shoulders and get herself out of the hook.

The she showed him what a real torture looked like.

 

 

“But you only thought it was dumb to marry Caroline _after_ someone threatened her.”

“Weren’t you listening?” Shaw asks, applying more pressure than necessary to wrap a wound.

Cole hisses unappreciatively.

“I reacted,” she continues, securing the bandage, “is my point.”

“No kidding,” he replies. “That’s what happens when you feel something.”

“I don’t _feel_.”

“That’s not my impression.”

Shaw sighs. “Maybe I do but not as often as everyone else. That’s what makes me good at this job.”

“You’re more or less fired so.”

“Well, not at the time. At the time I thought it was a weakness ‘cause when someone pulls your nails out one by one, it’s hard enough to convince yourself you are worth less than the information you have.” Cole nods understandingly. “It’s so much harder when a person can make you see the real value of a human life.”

Cole looks down at his bandaged calf. She swats away his hand when he tries to touch it.

“So why did you marry her?”

 

…

 

The first time Shaw caught Caroline with one of her pets was nine months and fourteen days ago. They were both supposed to be out of town but Shaw had come home a day early.

The apartment was empty. The only sound was of dripping water from the leak under the kitchen sink. Shaw had found herself instantly relieved. She didn’t have to answer the usual line of query Caroline will bombard her with whenever she came home.

It wasn’t about the lying. Her answers had become almost automatic by then. It was the highly predictable routine that they had fallen into. It was wearing her down.

Caroline always asked the same five questions;

“How was your trip?”

“Did you have time to visit –insert name of place nowhere near to where Shaw went-?

“Do you notice anything different with the house?”

“Do you like it?”

“Did you remember to call the plumber?”

But she rarely ever got to question five. On average, the conversation would descend into a full-blown argument by question three.

Delighted, Shaw prepared a three course meal for herself. Despite her being the better cook, it was Caroline who frequently made their meals. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t good either. The problem was that there had been too many instances of Caroline waiting with an empty stomach for her. The last time that happened, Caroline, in a fit of anger and a thirst for vengeance, banned Shaw from ever entering the kitchen. Of course the ban was never carried out, but Caroline had been the default cook ever since then.

That night, Shaw slept soundly (or least as soundly as she would allow herself). It had been awhile since she had her own space. On missions, she would have to share it with Cole and at home, with Caroline.

There was a certain tranquillity that came with being alone. She had felt it all the time before she met Caroline. Then she met Caroline and became less appreciative of it; too occupied with the flowery feelings that came with falling in love. It never occurred to her that those feelings would pass.

She felt a sense of regret as she laid alone in their king-sized bed—that tranquillity had become an almost impossible thing, replaced by a nagging wife, and just before she fell asleep, she had a quiet wish; for things to be the way it used to when she had only herself to think of.

Little did she know that her wish would come true in eight hours.

 

 

Shaw knocks on the door.

Veronica is taking her time to answer. Shaw wonders if she is even in the room waiting for her. Veronica’s voice had shook when she answered Cole’s call. She was worried for him, but her fear far outweighed her concern. She went so far as telling him to never contact her again.

It would have taken Shaw a sentence to change her mind. Cole took two hours of coaxing and begging.

Shaw knocks again.

“She’s there,” Cole’s voice crackles through her earpiece. “How’s your face?”

“I didn’t bring a mirror,” Shaw answers curtly. “Why?”

“Sometimes it can be scary. Maybe she’s looking through the peephole and—“

“My face is _fine_ ,” she growls.

As if proving her point, the lock clicks.

Shaw readies her gun.

“She’s my friend,” Cole reminds her for the umpteenth time. “Be gentle.”

Shaw rolls her eyes. He is acting like she can’t carry a normal conversation with another human being.

The gun is just a precaution. She’ll put it away once—

A shriek mercilessly stabs at Shaw’s eardrums.

But what startled Shaw wasn’t the shrill scream directed at her, though she would feel much better if it would stop. No, it was the woman who opened the door. Shaw quickly covers the woman’s mouth and pushes her into the room before her scream could attract any unwanted attention.

As Shaw is kicking the door close behind her, the woman pulls herself away from Shaw, but she loses her balance in the process and falls back on the carpeted floor.

Shaw sighs and tucks her gun into her waistband. She holds out a hand to the woman—the woman who is most definitely not Cole’s friend, Veronica.

“That’s not Veronica,” Cole says.

“No shit,” she mutters and shuts off her comms.

“What are you doing here?” Shaw asks her wife.

Caroline slaps her hand away.

“What am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here?” she says, picking herself up from the floor. “And why do you have a gun?”

“I…”

Shaw doesn’t know how to explain herself out of this.

“Are you about to murder your mistress?”

“Who?”

“That woman—“ Caroline stutters, her eyes glancing towards something behind Shaw, and Shaw remembers that she isn’t the only one in the room who needs to explain herself. “The woman you’re here to meet.”

“What did you do?” Shaw squints.

Caroline doesn’t flinch but her foot gives her away when it points towards the bathroom, and Shaw hears it; the faint sound of banging steel. Shaw doesn’t immediately turn towards it. She waits, counting to ten in her head.

At ten, Caroline still hasn’t opened her mouth to offer an explanation so she moves towards the bathroom, but Caroline grabs her shoulder at her first step.

“Look, you have to understand,” Caroline says, her voice strained. “You didn’t come home last night I, I was worried and a few months ago, one of my yoga buddies told me about this app that can track phones—“

“Is that how you found me?” Shaw asks.

“My head went to a crazy place. You _have_ to believe me,” Caroline pleads. “And so when she answered the door and not you, I just lost it!”

Caroline loosens her grip when Shaw doesn’t even turn her head to look at her, and she doesn’t stop Shaw again when Shaw starts moving towards the bathroom again.   

Behind the bathroom door, she finds a woman tied up and gagged in the bathtub.

“B-but you’re here with a gun so you can’t tell you’re not planning something bad either.”

“I wasn’t,” Shaw says, her voice cold. “Except you already know what I came here for, don’t you?”

She really should have seen it coming, but she had to see it first. She just couldn’t believe it without first setting eyes on an undisputable evidence to confirm it.

But it’s too late. She is already lying on the floor, her body that was trained in several martial arts paralysed, rendered useless by a taser. Above her, her wife wears the self-satisfied smirk that she has become accustomed to in the past year.

“You didn’t think you were the only liar in the marriage, did you?”

 

 

The morning after her night alone, Shaw went for a run; too refreshed to sit and wait for her wife to come home.

As she stepped out the door, she decides that it would be a leisurely jog. Get some fresh air, smell the roses—the sort of thing people who don’t spend every second of their day looking over their shoulders do.

She couldn’t do it. Half a mile in, she started picking up her pace. If there were roses, she didn’t notice them. She had passed by them so fast they had become less than a blur. It’s silly anyway because when you live in a city, right around the corner where your favourite bakery is, there is a drunk guy, whose night only just ended, peeing at a wall.

Before she knew it, she was already by the marina, five miles away from where she started.

She was huffing her lungs out when a familiar figure caught her eye. It was climbing down a boat onto the dock while a Ken doll who was hastily throwing on a wrinkled shirt chased after her.

Shaw’s immediate reaction was to scatter out of sight so she could witness the scene unfold before her.

Ken fell on his face as he got off the boat, probably too much in a hurry to look where his feet were. The woman didn’t react. She just kept on walking even though Ken fell hard enough that the thud could be heard by Shaw.

Instantly, Shaw had one foot out of her hiding place. His stance screamed of desperation, and she knew well enough that that could easily turn into anger in a moment’s notice.

But then the woman gently took hold of his collar, folded it back and straightened it out. Not that it did much good because his shirt wasn’t even buttoned down.

Except that wasn’t really the point.

She was pacifying him, like she did with Shaw every other day.

If Shaw was right, next will be the face touching. Then the light kiss somewhere between the left cheek and the lips. After that will be the finger playing, and for the grand finale; the empty promise.

The first three were checked off the list, and probably the fourth too if the dumb smile on Ken’s face was any indication.

She had felt that dumb smile creeping on her face too, more times than she’d like to admit. Caroline had a way with words that made her believe that they won’t have another stupid fight for something like the different shades of beige for their living room wall ever again.

One time, it hadn’t even been an hour since they made up when Caroline broke the truce that she herself had called for.

This is it, Shaw thought. This is her chance to never have another petty argument ever again. All she had to do was to strut up there and tell Caroline that this was too much of a betrayal for her.

Except she couldn’t move.

She just stood there like a statue, watching Caroline break yet another one of her promises.

Then she ran home as fast as she could.

But she couldn’t outrun a car. Caroline was home when she arrived.

“Where did you go?” Caroline asked.

“The marina,” she answered nonchalantly, bending down to take off her shoes.

“Why? I mean, you usually jog at the park.”

“Well, I woke up this morning and realized that during the whole year that we’ve lived here, I have never been there before.”

“Did you see anything…interesting?”

“Not really,” Shaw replied, taking off her other shoe. “It was kind of disappointing.”

“So no second visit?”

Shaw stood up, wiping her palms on her pants. Then she looked towards Caroline, eyes zeroing in on Caroline’s face, but her sharp gaze didn’t seem to affect Caroline. Caroline’s expression was unreadable but there was a slight tremor in her voice.

(Was she afraid? Shaw had wondered, and still do now.)

“Never.” 

 

 

Caroline drags her into a chair and smiles slyly as she zipties Shaw’s wrists to the armrests. It is staggering how that smile doesn’t seem foreign to Shaw at all. If she closes one eye, she could probably find the same smile that made her heart flutter a week ago.

Shaw groans.

“Don’t tell me you have never fantasized about this before,” Caroline purrs, leaning in a little too closely towards Shaw as she pulls one of the zipties tight.

Shaw can only respond with silence. Her muscles are still twitching with 50,000 volts of electricity, making it difficult for her mouth to form anything coherent.

“Of course not,” Caroline says incredulously, stepping back. “You’re allergic to anything fun.”

If it isn’t for the way her feet are bouncing with giddiness, Shaw would have thought she sounded disappointed. She gives Shaw a once over, checking to make sure Shaw is secure before disappearing to the left of Shaw’s periphery.

Something clicks.

“When I first read your file, I thought I was going to have so much fun,” Caroline says as she reappears within Shaw’s limited field of vision with an iron in hand. She clucks her tongue. “Instead, I found myself in a stale marriage.”

She kneels down, placing the iron on the floor. Then she pulls the chair, and consequently, Shaw towards her.

“I get it,” she says, slowly unzipping Shaw’s hoodie. “It is difficult to be married to someone you don’t love. Believe me,” her tone is mocking, “I _know_. But still, it really hurt my feelings.”

Caroline trails her fingers down Shaw’s thighs, and Shaw feels her toes flinch. She bends a thumb to make sure.

“So what?” Shaw says, testing out her jaw. Her voice comes out a little shaky. “Is this revenge?”

Caroline chuckles as she picks up the iron again. “You know I’m not a vindictive person.” She licks her index finger, and a menacing sizzle sounds when her saliva touches the iron’s surface. “But I do have some questions for you.”

“Actually,” Shaw says. “I kinda enjoy this sort of thing.”

“Aww, babe,” Caroline squeals. “Why—“

Her phone beeps. She quickly stands to retrieve it.

“Oh, just when we’re starting to really connect,” she says disappointedly after checking her phone. “I know. We made much more progress in the last five minutes than in our last five therapy sessions.”

Caroline collects her bag and coat, then heads for the door.

But before leaving, she stops briefly in front of Shaw.

Lips curled up in a devious smile, she says, “But I’m sure we will get another chance soon.”


	2. Disappointment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This woman is not Caroline. This woman is a stranger and Shaw’s anger isn’t for a stranger. Her fury is for her wife. Still, there is no harm in waiting for a reason to put a bullet between this stranger’s eyes, so Shaw keeps her gun up.
> 
> But the stranger is far too distraught to even notice the gun pointed at her. 
> 
> Too distraught to remember that she once impersonated Shaw’s wife.

A month had gone by and she still hasn’t found Caroline. Some part of her wishes that Caroline is looking too. Cole seems to think that she is obsessing. That she has some twisted craving for a reunion.

He’s wrong.

What she wants is payback.

She has been lied to for three years and quite recently almost tortured by her own wife. Searching for Caroline is the most reasonable thing for her to do.

It doesn’t matter what Cole thinks anyway. He is on he’s own ‘payback crusade’. He joined the wonder twins to basically do what he had done for the Activity, just with a different demographic.

She doesn’t understand how it is revenge.

His explanation went completely over her head. He said that the fact that he is alive and using his expertise, an expertise the Activity would have benefited from if they hadn’t tried to kill him, for something else feels close enough to payback.

She asked if he was kidding. His revenge plan seems to lack a crucial ingredient; pain.

It’s why Shaw has been setting aside a chunk of her time each day to study every torture technique there is. She already has a shortlist of techniques for which pain is maximized and the chances of death are minimized.

He shrugs.

“Besides, someone like her, out there—she’s going to do a lot of damage. Aren’t your new friends concerned?” she asks after a momentary silence.

He sips his coffee and leans back on the bench.

“They are,” he says.

“So I’m doing them a favour. Why are you complaining?”

“I just think it’s unhealthy.”

“How?” she asks forcefully. “It’s what we did. We would look into every aspect of a person’s life—from how much sugar they take in their coffee, if they even drink coffee, to when they’re planning to blow up a mall. How is this any different?”

He inhales sharply. “She’s your wife.”

She shakes her head. “I still don’t see the difference.”

“It used to be we get a number, right? We would find out who they are, which usually meant finding out the kind of despicable person they are. Then you’d them out. Job over. But with her, can you honestly tell me that you see an end?”

“Well, there is the dark basement where I’m going to let her rot. Does that count?”

“Geez, Sam,” he says, wincing. He then gets up and goes to the nearest trash can to throw out his coffee cup, but instead of coming back to the bench, he leans over the can like he’s going to throw up.

He doesn’t.

“Fine, whatever,” he tells her when he returns to the bench after not throwing up. “Go realize your revenge fantasy. I just need one thing from you.”

“What?”

“I’ve seen these things happen, or at least I’ve heard of them—operators getting lost in a personal vendetta. Mostly, people never hear from them again. So I need you to not disappear on me, okay?”

Shaw rolls her eyes.

“I mean it,” he says, tone serious. “I know you’re bad at checking in, but please…twice a week.”

“Once every two weeks,” Shaw counters.

“Okay,” he mumbles, not entirely happy with her answer, but then he utters again more clearly, “Okay,” nodding, “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Then a month passes and she owes Cole two calls.

She hasn’t forgotten about it. It just has become one of those things that you mean to do first thing in the morning but gets pushed to the bottom of your day’s to-do list when you remember the other thousand things on it, and by the time you get to it, you’re too tired to even keep your eyes open. So you say tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll do it.

Except tomorrow the same thing happens.

 

 

It's all Wilson's fault really.

Fucking Wilson.

Fucking Wilson who, upon her arrival at a dropsite in Chicago, gloatingly greeted her with, "I hear congratulations are in order," not twenty four hours after her supposed wedding proposal.

Of course they knew.

Fucking Wilson who, when she told him not to worry, that she was going to break it off, said,

"No, we don't want that," with a face twisted in a mocking grin. "We would never stand in the way between our operators and happiness."

Which was as big a lie as the one he used to lure her and Cole to their deaths a few months ago.

And when she didn't buy it, fucking Wilson put on a terribly crafted mask of sincerity, and said,

"We're worried about you, Sam. You're not like everyone else."

"I thought that makes me special," she quoted her previous progress report that he had written. "Makes me an operator who puts her assigned objective above all else, even conventional morality."

"Yes, but there have been too many instances where your cover was broken," he said.

"I get the job done," she replied.

"Look, we are running a covert operation here. We can't risk getting exposed. And you getting caught in every other city of the world doesn't help. Control is wondering if you are even worth keeping."

"And you want to keep me?"

"Of course. You're my best operator."

She snickered. "If you're going to lie to me, at least pick a better lie. I bet you already have five people lined up to replace me at any moment."

"What is a better lie?" he asked.

"Honesty. You did a background check on Caroline and found something, didn't you?"

"She's sweet," he sneered. It made her want to punch him in the face. "Adventurous, yes. But not that different from most other women with her background. Actually, the most surprising thing about her is that she picked you, which is lucky because we think that she can give you an appearance of normalcy. Having ties to someone as…wholesome as her makes you less of a suspicious character."

"Bullshit. I don't spend more than a month in one place. No one is looking at me, much less, _for_ me. And I always clean up after myself. Tell me what I don't know about Caroline."

"I assure you there is nothing to tell."

And that was exactly what she found on Caroline;

Other than a number of unpaid tickets she had in every corner of the world—evenin parts where there were no traffic laws to speak of—andone wrecked moped in Rio de Janeiro, there was nothing to indicate that she was a danger to anyone.

Maybe she really was the woman Shaw had come to know.

Which should be good news.

There was no reason to keep this thing going.

Except she's a good soldier. And a good soldier follows orders.

"You don't have to believe me,"

Wilson's words rang in her ears as she watched Caroline running towards her, wide smile and sparkling eyes (Shaw blinked—no, it's just the fluorescent lights reflecting in her eyes), waving at her.

"But I believe in every word I wrote in that report."

His sly smirk etched in her brain.

"Unless there was something I didn't account for, like love?" he had snickered.

And there's Caroline, shy of a foot away from her, fidgeting and unsure what to make of Shaw's solemn look.

It reminded her of their first meeting, how her hand shook picking up the scotch she had ordered for herself. Fear shook her but somehow she stood her ground. She stayed in the bar and somehow didn't have one foot out the door when the police left.

She wanted to be there and no primitive instinct to flee can tell her to leave.

"Cold feet?" she asked, pulling Shaw back into the present.

It was an opening that Shaw should have taken.

She should have said, YES, she had been too hasty with their future.

Instead, she took a step forward, and told Caroline how much she had been missing her.

 

 

She has now owed Cole three calls and a half.

The half was for the call she made when Cole seemed occupied. She would have counted it as one if he hadn’t yelled, “This does not count!” into the phone before the line went dead.

She immediately raced to the airport and took the first plane out to New York.

That was something like twenty five hours ago.

He’s okay.

They are meeting at a diner that serves the worst eggs in the world. How do you mess up eggs? They don’t require that much effort to be edible, and whatever she has on her plate is not.

At least the coffee’s good. She raises her hand to a waitress to get a refill.

“Rough morning?” the waitress asks. Her name tag reads Lucinda.

“More like night,” Shaw replies without thinking. She doesn’t usually offer her recent whereabouts to other that freely, but she hasn’t slept for two days so, “Right from the airport.”

She nods appreciatively as Lucinda pours coffee into her cup.

She’s halfway through it when Cole shows up, a big fat smile on his face. It must be all the sleep he’s had while not dead.

“Hey, if you had _called_ like you said you would,” he says, sitting down, “you’d know that was undercover at a harmless call center.”

“Then why did you hang up so suddenly?”

“I got a customer who was transferred seven times so I couldn’t just transfer her again.” He winces at the screech her fork makes as she slides it through her inedible eggs, but goes on, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

She flattens the bits of eggs that she managed to drag across her plate onto her potatoes. Of course it fucking matters. Apparently she just travelled halfway across the world because he needed to be nice to someone and couldn’t take five seconds to explain it to her.

It barely registers to her what he is saying.

“We got a lead on Root,” he repeats.

“Who?”

“Caroline! We think we found her.”

 

…

 

She is waiting beside a door, Reese nagging at her to push it open.

“Not yet,” she says.

Her wife is in there. She grips her gun tighter in her hand, her finger itching for the trigger, but somehow it keeps missing, choosing to stay outside the trigger guard.

Her heart is thumping dangerously fast in anticipation.

Or is it anxiety?

No, this is the moment that she has been waiting for; that lying bitch on the other side of this door will pay. She will pay with death.

No, that is far too good for her. Pain, first—a lot of pain until she wishes she is dead, then a little more before Shaw takes the mantle of the bigger person and ends her misery.

“We need to get in there,” Reese insists again.

“No, we need her distracted,” Shaw says when the real reason behind her hesitation is her indecision over Root’s fate. She hasn’t decided where to aim; death or pain, or both.

“She’s a psycho with a gun,” Reese whines. “If we don’t go in there—“

Shaw pushes the door and aims for the pelvis where it will hurt the most.

“MY NAME IS ROOT!”

Her bullet ends up piercing through a shoulder.

This woman is not Caroline. This woman is a stranger and Shaw’s anger isn’t for a stranger. Her fury is for her wife. Still, there is no harm in waiting for a reason to put a bullet between this stranger’s eyes, so Shaw keeps her gun up.

But the stranger is far too distraught to even notice the gun pointed at her.

Too distraught to remember that she once impersonated Shaw’s wife.

 

 

The lie which convinced Shaw that Caroline was a real person was a secret Caroline had refused to tell her.

A week before their wedding Caroline requested for an impromptu adventure.

“Who knows if we will have another one,” she ruefully pondered out loud.

Shaw had vehemently protested, not the adventure but the statement.  She foolishly believed that their lives were not going to change.

“We’re still going to keep doing what we do,” Shaw said confidently. “The only difference is—“

“We’re going to have each other to come home to,” Caroline completed the sentence, her expression brightening up.

Shaw can’t help but smile. She reached a hand across the table for Caroline’s. “But?” she asked.

Caroline didn’t reply immediately. She just let her fingers play with Shaw’s for a moment, and Shaw watched, patiently waiting for whatever it was that was on her mind.

“Okay,” Caroline uttered eventually. “Maybe not our last adventure, but our first real one together.”

 They had a million things to do for the wedding. A wedding, it seemed, was an unending to-do list.

“That’s why we hired a wedding planner,” Caroline said with a cheeky smile.

“So we could go on a last minute trip before our wedding?” Shaw asked. “Your mom’s not going to be too happy about it.”

“I’ll take care of my mom. Don’t worry about her.”

“Are you sure?” Shaw asked even though everything inside her wanted to grab Caroline’s hand, drag her into a car and just drive to anywhere. She had to be sure that it’s something that Caroline really wanted.

Caroline nodded, a quiet intense need reflected in her eyes like it wasn’t the first time she had thought this adventure she was proposing.

So the next day Shaw packed their stuff into the trunk of Mrs Turing’s car while Mrs Turing assured her daughter that she will take of the wedding stuff until they get back. Then they drove off to Bishop, Texas.

It was a weird place to go for an adventure. As far as Shaw could tell there was nothing in Bishop, Texas except people, and not one of them had ever come up in conversations she’d had with Caroline.

When Shaw asked, Caroline just said, “It’s not the destination. It’s the journey.”

Shaw didn’t push, just stepped on the accelerator and merged into the freeway. Caroline said it was the journey that mattered but the only two places where they stopped at for more than thirty minutes during their journey were Tucson and San Antonio; Tuscon because it had gotten dark and San Antonio because Caroline wanted to see the Alamo.

By the time they arrived in San Antonio, the Alamo had closed for the day. Caroline acted like was a spur of the moment decision but when they checked into a Best Western, she gave her name to the front desk clerk when she thought Shaw’s attention was elsewhere; she had booked a room for them two days prior like she had known that they would make a stop there.

“What’s going on?” Shaw asked when they entered their room.

Caroline dropped her bag onto the floor. “You mean right now?” she said, unbuttoning her shirt. “I’m thinking a shower.”

“No,” Shaw said, staring unblinkingly at Caroline whose shirt had coiled around her feet. “What’s in Bishop?”

Caroline just continued pushing down her pants so they would join her shirt on the floor. She had this faraway look on her. “Just someone I needed to say goodbye to,” she muttered, almost inaudibly.

Then she went straight into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Shaw picked up Caroline’s duffel bag. It’s light even for a seasoned traveller like Caroline. You pack that light when you go somewhere you know, someone you are really familiar with and you don’t worry about not having things because you already know where things are.

The bathroom door creaked open and Caroline’s head peeked out of it. Shaw put the bag aside.

“The invitation is still open, by the way,” Caroline said, voice husky in that way that you don’t have to look at the person to see the playful smirk etched on their lips.

It’s another distraction, Shaw knew—another way to dodge her questions—but Shaw had her ways too. She pushed the door open and she pulled herself towards Caroline, her lips landing on Caroline’s long neck and trailing down to Caroline’s collarbone, while Caroline pushed her shirt up, desperate for the feel of Shaw’s skin on her palms. Caroline pushed her back and it left Shaw perplexed for a moment before Caroline tugged her shirt up.

“Too much distraction?” Shaw said, an eyebrow rising.

Caroline rolled her eyes and roughly pulled the shirt over Shaw’s head.

The pants were easier. They slipped right off as Shaw licked Caroline’s upper lip, her tongue teasing before entering Caroline’s mouth, and Caroline backed slowly towards the shower, one hand firmly holding on to Shaw’s hip and the other reaching for the faucet while Shaw followed.

A cold rush of water hit them, and Shaw accidentally bit into Caroline’s lower lip, tasting the blood as it cracked.

Before Shaw could stop, Caroline whispered, “Don’t stop.”

And she whispered again as the water turned hot.

_“Don’t stop.”_

And once more when the water started burning.

_“Don’t stop.”_

Shaw’s hand reached for the faucet but Caroline snatched her wrist, pulling it away.

“Just let me turn it down,” Shaw mumbled into Caroline’s ear as Caroline hungrily sucked on that damned spot near her neck, a gasp slipping out between ‘me’ and ‘turn’.

Caroline didn’t let go, holding on to Shaw’s wrist a little too tightly.

Shaw pushed, “Carol—“

Caroline pulled, one hand still firmly grasped on Shaw’s wrist.

But Shaw pushed back—“Caroline!”—harder this time. Caroline stumbled back, Shaw’s wrist slipping out of her hand, and her arm stretched out to reach for it again before her fingers curled inward and let arm fall to her side.

“Do you want to burn?” Shaw asked, backing herself out of the shower. “Is that it?”

Caroline leaned back on the tiled wall and let herself slide until her body disappeared behind her legs, her chin resting atop her knees, and she looked up to Shaw with an unreadable expression.

“Kinda,” she uttered.

The next day, they didn’t see The Alamo. They left for Bishop early in the morning to visit the grave of one Rebecca Madden, Caroline’s roommate in college. She was driving back home for Christmas during their junior year when her car skidded on black ice and hurtled right into a lamp post.

Caroline didn’t explain any further than that, but it was enough information for Shaw to look up. It all checked out.

But the thing which convinced Shaw was not the facts, though they did help. It was what Caroline said in the shower that night.

“It itches, you know.”

Her skin had reddened and Shaw moved to shut the shower off, thinking that the heat was getting too much for Caroline, but when the water stopped, Caroline went on.

“The guilt,” she said. “It’s like these tiny little ants crawling on your skin and you really want to burn them off.”

Shaw has something like that too.

It doesn’t crawl though. It just buzzes like flies in her ears, sometimes turning into the voice of a man she no longer remembers.

 

 

Shaw wanted to leave the stranger but Harold with his bleeding heart insisted on bringing her along. He thinks any life should be preserved even if they have terrorized his. She doesn’t argue. There are more pressing matters at hand; two of them are guns pointed at them.

“You think you’re choosing the right side, Shaw?” Special Counsel asks as they move towards the exit.

“You like to me too,” Shaw tells him.

He glances briefly at the stranger, an eyebrow rising at the irony. “Are you still hung up on that?” he says. “At least no one died.”

“We could have!” Cole yells into her ear, and Shaw grits her teeth, swallowing the reminder that none of the others could hear him except her. The pain and anger in his voice make her squash the urge to yell at him later for hurting her eardrum.

In New York, Harold leaves her to babysit the stranger in a safe house while he arranges for “Miss Groves’ future accommodation”. John asks if she wants company. She shakes her head. Anyone, even the dog, could watch the shell of a person the stranger has become.

The stranger could barely walk. Shaw had to drag her from the car and into the apartment, and when Shaw drops her onto the plush couch, she doesn’t straighten her back and just lets herself lean lopsidedly on the armrest.

Shaw doesn’t bother to help her settle into a more comfortable position. She goes straight to the kitchen to find something edible. The kitchen unfortunately is an open one where she can’t hide from the stranger’s empty eyes. She tries her hardest to ignore them, but as she is slicing the cheese, her eyes inadvertently glance towards the stranger whose sling has loosened considerably.

The stranger doesn’t flinch when Shaw unties the sling. The wound should hurt, but it’s the sudden movement after keeping it immobile for so long that always gets Shaw. San Antonio comes to her mind. That same blank expression, except her wife at least wanted to feel something. This stranger doesn’t care.

She unwraps the bandage. Harold had instructed her to stitch up the wound. There wasn’t any time when they were running away from Special Counsel and Hersh. She sprays some anaesthetic on the wound and finally the stranger hisses.

“I’m just going to stitch it up,” Shaw tells her.

The stranger nods, the sting returning a tiny bit of life to her eyes.

“Sameen…you’re here,” she mutters like it’s the first time she notices Shaw’s presence since Portland.

Shaw pierces the first hole in her skin, and a shadow of a smile breaks through the stranger’s features.

“We did say we were gonna play again,” she says.

It makes Shaw want to stab the needle into her flesh and leave it there, but she just strings the thread across the wound, pulls it taut and repeats, putting all of her concentration on the wound and not the impostor staring back at her. When she finishes, her eyes fall on the stranger’s without her meaning to and a question she hasn’t thought of tumbles out her lips,

“Was any of it real?”

The stranger’s eyes turn hollow again like Shaw just flipped a switch.

“You tell me,” the stranger says before turning away from Shaw to stare at nothing again.

Shaw retrieves her phone from the kitchen counter and calls Harold, her back turned towards the stranger. As soon as Harold picks up, she tells him to get her a ticket to anywhere but there.

 

…

 

“Where is your sweet girl?” her mother asks.

It’s not as sweet as it sounds. Her mother hasn’t been able to call Caroline her wife since the wedding. When Shaw told her she was getting married, her mother was ecstatic. Her greatest fear was for Shaw to end up alone, which she had come to terms with when Shaw was kicked out of her residency program. If a profession that values skill above human connection can’t accept her, no human should be able to either.

Then Shaw told her that her fiancé’s name is Caroline.

“Isn’t that a girl’s name?” her mother had asked, and Shaw couldn’t tell whether it’s purposeful ignorance or subconscious denial.

“Yes, maman.”

“What kind of man are you marrying?”

“The kind who is a woman.”

Her mother wasn’t too happy about it but she had easily shaken off her disappointment as she did many times before and given Shaw a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.  

Shaw shrugs at her mother’s question and is surprised when her mother looks disappointed. It’s not as bad as the last time but it’s there.

“You were never good at keeping things,” her mother says, “especially nice things.”

“I’m not sure losing a Walkman when I was fifteen is the same as losing a wife.”

“It was expensive!” her mother exclaims.

“You bought it at a garage sale.”

Her mother sighs, shaking her head. “I never know what to do with you.”

“I know,” Shaw says. “We’ve had this conversation more than once.”

“No,” her mother replies. “I never know what to do with you, but that girl did.”

“Maman,” Shaw says wearily. “I’m actually tired.”

Thankfully, her mother doesn’t press the issue. She just tells Shaw to rest, adding, “I’ll wake you up when dinner is ready.”

When she wakes up, it’s morning instead of night and she almost believes that she had a quick nap instead of having slept for more than twelve hours if not for the clock on the wall that still ticks even though she hasn’t slept in her childhood bedroom since she joined the Marines. Somehow her head still feels heavy like she hasn’t slept at all but she ignores the crushing weight and stumbles to the kitchen.

Her mother is cooking breakfast.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asks.

“I did,” her mother answers. “Several times. I even tried to wake you up in case you wanted to pray with me, but you wouldn’t open your eyes. Where did you drive from?”

“The airport.”

“Then why are so tired?”

“I just am, maman.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“I’m not,” Shaw says. She doesn’t add that she arrived at the airport via a twenty five hour flight with only one two hour stopover. Harold’s idea of anywhere just didn’t feel right. So she bought a ticket right out of the gate and picked the first place she could think of.

Her mother turns around, frying pan in one hand and a spatula on the other, her eyes squinting suspiciously at Shaw.

“Sameen…” she drawls

“I swear,” Shaw says.

Her mother eyes her from head to toe. “You look terrible.”

“Good morning to you too,” Shaw replies, suddenly feeling tired from all the standing she has done in the past minute.  She pulls a chair out to sit.

Her mother doesn’t scoop the eggs into the plates she had ready on the table and continues to look at Shaw despondently. There is something just at the tip of her tongue but she clamps her mouth down, unwilling to let the words escape.

Maybe if Shaw is another daughter—maybe her mother would rush to her side and cradle her and tell her that she understands, that she too had lost her love, but Shaw is her only daughter and she’s had to get used to that. So instead of all that, she scoops up the eggs and puts them on the plate nearest to where her daughter sits and asks monotonously,

“What are you going to do today?”

 

 

Shaw has a pendrive that she carries everywhere. In it is everything she has complied on the woman who calls herself Root. When Shaw was still searching for her, the first thing she did whenever she had set up an operating base was to print out everything—pictures, newspaper clippings, police reports, witness testimonies— _everything_ in the pendrive no matter how crowded the walls of her usually tiny temporary home had become.

It helps, she told herself. The pinning and the frantic scribbling of arrows and the countless rage filled slapping post-its and the eventual burning of all the paper involved helped.

She even believed it when she almost caught up to Root in Ordos. They were about twenty yards away from each other, in a sea of people, but somehow Shaw had spotted her immediately.  Shaw pushed and shoved, ignoring the angry yells directed at her. She was almost there—if she reached out her arm, she could probably reach for Root’s jacket—when Root turned her head slightly, revealing a quarter of a smirk like she knew Shaw was there. It gave Shaw pause. A pause she soon regretted because a second later, a tall man obstructed Shaw’s view of her target. By the time she reached the tall man and shoved him aside, Root had disappeared.

Shaw is no longer searching—there is a patient in a psychiatric facility called Stoneridge Hospital who looks a lot like her wife—but she has spent the last three hours printing the contents of her pendrive using the world’s slowest printer her mother bought almost a decade ago.  

She thinks about it for a moment, if she is really putting up a stalker chart on the walls of her childhood bedroom, but then she looks down at her t-shirt and sees the blotches of black, red, blue and yellow on it, and thinks no amount of detergent can wash those inks out. She has gone too far to turn back now.

So she retrieves the first photograph on the pile and pins it to the very center of the wall opposite her bed. Then she pins a newspaper clipping on the far left side of the wall. Then another newspaper clipping before a police report before a picture of ‘Mrs Turing’ impersonating Elvis before a picture o ‘Mr Turing’ performing a one man show.

 It's only when the wall has filled up that she stops her mindless pinning and stands back to examine her handiwork. There is still a huge pile of paper on her desk but she pushes them off it to find the red permanent marker she bought this morning.

'LIE', she writes on Rebecca Madden's student ID. 'TRUTH', she writes on a newspaper clipping detailing Hanna Frey's disappearance. 'LIE', she writes on a picture of Mr and Mrs Turing on their wedding. 'TRUTH', she writes on the death certificate of a Rachel Groves. 'TRUTH', she writes again on the headshot of a man named Andrew Carter. 'LIE', she writes on an article about a father-daughter karaoke battle dated October 12, 1993. 'TRUTH', she writes on the police report for Trent Russell's murder.

She marks one paper after another with one of those two words and when her hand grows tired, she switches to her left hand. It feels awkward and her writing turns into that of a five year old, not that it matters, but it makes writing 'truth' much harder and slows her down significantly so she starts marking only the lies.

She notices how she carefully avoids the center of the wall; the first picture she put up. It's Caroline, smiling at the photographer. Shaw remembers the day she took that picture. Caroline had bought a new phone and wanted Shaw to be the first person she saved into her contact list. Unfortunately, Shaw had just spent five days in a jungle pretty much by herself and just wanted to crash on their very expensive chiropractor approved mattress.

"Babe, how about a smile?" Caroline had said as Shaw buried her face into one of the hypoallergenic pillows they bought with the mattress even though neither of them had any alarming allergies.

"No," Shaw grunted into the pillow. "Go away."

"You know I could just take a picture of you sleeping," Caroline had said, settling herself on Shaw's back. "Everyone at the office would love it."

Shaw lifted her head and looked over her shoulder. "You comfortable there?"

"Very," Caroline said absently as Shaw heard a camera shutter clicking.     

Shaw was tired but she wasn't too tired to roll over and shift their positions so she'd be the one straddling Caroline.

"How about I take your picture and show it to all my coworkers?" she asked, retrieving the phone that had slipped out of Caroline's hand.

"They'd say you're the luckiest person on earth."

Caroline had this big dumb smile on her face like she'd rather not be anywhere but there.

Shaw draws a vertical line on the picture with her right hand. She pauses, taking a deep breath, before drawing a horizontal line from the bottom of the vertical line.

It's a lie of course, but she doesn't spell out the whole word and leaves the 'L' all by itself on Caroline's cheek. Then she backs away from the wall slowly as she counts the lies and the truths.

It feels like there are more lies than truths when she looks at the wall but her final tally tells her that there are more truths than lies.

It's not surprising. She's a good investigator when she isn't distracted but she counts again just to be sure.

Her legs hit the bed as she counts and she lets herself fall into it.

There are still more truths than lies, but the lies are too overwhelming that it seems to drown out the truths on the wall.

So she counts again.

 

…

 

 She spends the next three days in her room trying to separate between the truths and the lies. She has gotten more organized at it. Instead of blindly pinning papers on the walls, she arranges them horizontally according to their chronological order. She begins a certain year by arranging the lies as one line, then expands the truths above and below it.

It requires a lot of work; work she wouldn't have to pause from now and then when her mother calls her down for dinner. If it is up to her, she'd just stay up in her room but her mother is relentless. She knocks every five minutes whenever Shaw tries to ignore her. That and she keeps having loud phone conversations in front of Shaw's room about how glad she is that 'Sameen is home' and how she feels disappointed that even under one roof, they rarely see each other.

On the fourth day, Shaw wakes up to a post-it on her forehead and sore shoulders. Her body is aching for movements more rigorous than tipping on her toes and raising her arms up and down.

So she washes her face and changes into her running clothes, but before she leaves her room, she takes a long look at it. There is still a stack of papers on her desk, though now considerably lower than it was three days ago, and her feet suddenly feel heavy.

She doesn't know why but she feels an urgency to finish this.

But then her mother appears next to her.

"Are you going out?"

Shaw begins to shake her head. "I don't--"

"Good," her mother says, pushing her towards the staircase. "I can clean your room."

"But maman…"

"No, it smells like," her mother sniffs and crinkles her nose, "you."

"Okay, but…"

"Go!" her mother shooes her away.

She almost trips down the stairs but manages to regain her balance at the last second. She opens her mouth to protest again but her mother holds up a finger without even looking at her.

Finally, she settles with, "Just…please don't touch anything on the wall and the desk," she says before descending the stairs.

Of course when she comes back, the walls of her childhood room are bare and the only things left on her desk are her multi-colored permanent markers. She kind of expected it so it doesn't really bother her as long as—

Where is her pendrive?

It was still in her laptop when she left.

"MAMAN," she bellows as she rushes downstairs.

Her mother looks up from her magazine, pushing her glasses up her nose. "I know my hearing isn't what it used to be," she says, "but you didn't have to shout."

"Maman," Shaw says in a low but still audible tone. "Where. Is. My. Pen. Drive?"

"Your pens?" her mother asks. "I put them on your desk."

"No," Shaw says, still managing to keep her voice low. "My pendrive. It's not a pen. It's something you stick into a computer."

"Where did you put it?"

"It was in my computer."

"Are you sure? Because if it's on your desk, I might have—“  

"Please don't tell me you threw it away!" Shaw's voice rises.

"If it was on your desk…" her mother says quietly.

Shaw doesn't wait for her mother's excuse, barely hearing, "…there were so many papers," as she storms out the front door.

Mr Torres from across the street is outside tending to his garden. When he waves at her, she doesn't wave back. She just heads straight to the trash can and throws the lid open.

It's empty.

"The garbage truck came through just a few minutes ago," Mr Torres helpfully explains.

Of course.

It's not funny at all but it feels like a joke. _Three days_. She spent _three days_ trying to decipher her so called wife and the only thing she came close to proving is how much of an idiot she was, and now she is actually upset that those three days of useless effort are lost.

It's not funny at all but she finds herself shaking with laughter.

She sees Mr Torres abandoning his bag of fertilizer for his front door and grants him the overdue wave she owed when he takes one last peek at her from behind the door.

"Do you feel better?" her mother asks when she enters the living room.

"Not even remotely," Shaw answers, still laughing, and heads for the kitchen.

She's drinking some orange juice when her mother walks into the kitchen.

"Can I ask you a question?" her mother says.

"Sure," she gurgles with a mouth full of orange juice.

"Your sweet girl isn't dead, is she?"

Shaw shakes her head, gulping down the juice.

"And all those things you have on your wall are things you're trying to figure out about her?"

Shaw nods.

"Do you know where she is?"

Shaw nods again and sips her juice.

"So why don't you just ask her?"

It's not funny at all—actually it's a simple yet brilliant solution to her problem—but her mother is wiping her face from the orange juice that Shaw has sprayed all over her and Shaw is still doubled over, banging on the kitchen table and laughing harder than she did when she scared off Mr Torres into his house.

Even as Shaw gets an earful from her mother, she couldn't stop laughing.

Why didn't she think of that?

 

 

So she asks.

"Haven't we gone through this?" Robin says.

"Right. You said three words and went dead inside."

Robin leans back on her chair and she stares, no, more like watches Shaw, quirking her lips slowly into a smirk like Shaw is some dancing monkey who is there solely to amuse her.

"One of the things I have always appreciated about you."

"What?" Shaw exhales.

"How blunt you are. I wish you did it more often when we were married."

"Well, it's not like we signed any divorce papers yet so—" Shaw shakes her head at Robin's opening mouth, "NOT because I don't want to."

"Then why?" Robin asks.

Shaw releases a wry chuckle. "I can't divorce a person who doesn't exist, can I?"

"No, you can't," Robin says, almost beaming.

"I don't know what you're so happy about. It also means you're not my wife."

Robin's back straightens. "So why the sudden interest in our non-existent marriage?" she asks, still smiling so stubbornly.

"I need," Shaw grits her teeth. This isn't easy to admit. "I need to know how you fooled me."

"Maybe I'm just that good a liar."

"No."

"No?"

"You're not that good a liar. I figured out you cheated on me."

"What are you talking about?" Robin says, leaning forward. "I never cheated on you."

"Really? How about your marina boy toy?"

"Who?"

"Tall blue-eyed blonde. Your two o'clock appointment on Tuesdays. Ring any bells?"

"You mean Shawn?"

"Yes, Shawn."

"You have the wrong idea."

"You kissed him," Shaw huffs.

Robin's eyebrow quirks upward. "Only on the cheek. A friendly peck. That's it."

"Okay, but why is he always shirtless whenever you go see him at his boat?"

"Shawn is _always_ shirtless. He takes a lot of pride in his body."

"Right. How about your little mistress in Indiana?"

Robin's eyes widen.

"Yup," Shaw nods. "I know about her. And the other two you have in D.C."

Robin shakes her head. "You have the wrong idea."

"How?" Shaw asks, fixing a steely gaze at Robin.

"They were my business associates."

Shaw laughs. "Come on. Business associates don't speak with only an inch between their faces."

"It's a negotiation technique," Robin replies, shrugging.

The distress Shaw witnessed earlier is gone, replaced by something even more annoying than her previous glee; composure.

Shaw leans forward, closing the distance between their noses. "This," Shaw drawls, "is a negotiating technique?"

Robin glances away briefly before nodding. "A very effective one," she tells Shaw when their eyes meet again, her voice shaking slightly. "I would do anything you tell me to."

Shaw's point is made when she feels a hand on her knee, but her gaze doesn't falter. She keeps her eyes firmly on Robin, trying to determine whether the reaction Robin had before was a calculated one or something impromptu. Her eyes focus on Robin's cheeks; there is still a slight tinge of pink on them even though her expression has started displaying signs of mischief as her hand slowly slides down towards the space between Shaw's thighs.

Shaw grabs it and squeezes it hard enough that Robin winces.

"So, you really have never cheated on me?" Shaw asks.

Robin bites down on her lower lip, supressing the pained yelp that she almost releases when Shaw twists her wrist. She answers by shaking her head.

"Well, that's one reason not to break your wrist," Shaw says. "But you see, you let me believe it anyway, and I'm not sure if," she loosens her grip slightly, "if that makes me feel better or," then twists Robin's wrist even harder, causing Robin to bite down harder on her lip, "it makes me angrier."

"But," Robin swallows. "You didn't ask either."

Shaw chuckles wryly. "You and my mom…"

"How is she?" Robin asks with a forced cheer in her tone.

"She's good," Shaw replies. "She's taken up carpentry."

"How is that going?"

"She has a lot of crooked furniture in her house."

"She hasn't really taken up carpentry, has she?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Your mother threw a fit over that one wobbly table at our reception. Perfection isn't something she is willing to compromise on."

"I can't believe I introduced you to her," Shaw mutters, "when you introduced me to an Elvis impersonator and a writer who can't finish his one man show after a decade."

"He’s close—“ Robin gasps when Shaw gently pushes her hand in, reminding her that she's in no condition to make clever remarks at the moment.

She doesn't bite it down this time, probably due to the small cut on her lip. The blood makes it look bigger than it is and the red staining her teeth almost makes Shaw let go of her hand.

Almost, because it's keeping Shaw's hand occupied, which keeps her from flipping the table, which keeps her from doing something worse to Robin.

And she really wants to because the pain that she's subjecting to Robin, the one that she had hoped to alleviate her anger, isn't doing anything to her. The only thing she feels is more anger (which stems from, if she's being honest with herself, the hurt she feels from Caroline's betrayal).

But what if it does nothing? What if it just makes her angrier (sadder)? Then she would have killed someone for no reason and all she is left with is the anger (and grief) with no possible resolution because its source has ceased to exist.

So she tries again,

"All those times when you looked at me like I was the only person who mattered in this world, was there any one time when it was real?"

"Sameen…" Robin says, looking into Shaw's eyes. There are frown lines on her forehead indicating the pain she's feeling, but you couldn't tell that they're there from the way she's smiling so contently. "It was always real."

Shaw releases Caroline's hand and stands up so rapidly that her chair falls backwards, causing a loud crash that travelled outside of the room.

An orderly rushes inside, yelling, "What's going on?"

Robin wipes her lips calmly with the sleeve of her shirt, eyes remaining at the shocked Shaw, and says, "Nothing. My wife can be a little clumsy sometimes."

The orderly looks towards Shaw for confirmation.

Shaw just nods and asks, "Where do I sign out?"


	3. Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I. Need. You."
> 
> It burns her with rage that only five months ago she had longed to hear that voice saying those three words to her. She was even desperate enough for them to bring it up during one of their fake therapy sessions.
> 
> Or maybe it's the spaghetti blowtorch burning beneath both their chins.

She used to fuck after a night out.

It didn't stop after she met Caroline. There were still men and women who smiled at her just right and bought her drinks in bars. It only stopped after their seventh meeting. When all the smiles seemed so wrong and the only right one was Caroline's.

Ever since her wife turned out to be a big fat liar, there still hasn't been one that feels right. She goes out dancing sometimes when her exhaustive workout routine fails to tire her out. When it's 10 PM and she's wide awake on her bed, staring at the damp spot on her ceiling. She'd put on her tightest dress and head to a club where she'd dance and grind herself against body after body. At the end of the night, she would find herself hurling the contents of her stomach into a toilet bowl. In her loft. Alone.

There was a girl after Ian Murphy chose Carter over her (which is fair; Carter got her head spinning just a few hours prior). She had black hair and hazel eyes, and was only an inch taller than Shaw—that's three points already—and her smile was almost right.

It was neither sleazy nor desperate. It just emanated joy, like it should. She was a grad student who had just submitted her thesis.

"I still have the thesis defense," she had said. "And there are a bunch of other things I need to do before I could even think of the word 'graduate', but my friends say it's a huge thing off the checklist so…"

"You're here to not celebrate."

She had laughed and it gave Shaw this fuzzy warm feeling in her stomach. Or maybe that was just her third shot of whiskey.

The girl was kind of fidgety. Shaw could tell that she didn't do it often, talking and smiling to strangers under poor lighting.

"Well, if I were really not celebrating, I'd be home in my sweats catching up on my Netflix queue."

"Charming."

"But," she grazed Shaw's pinky finger with her thumb, her eyes shifting downward. Or maybe the coyness and nerves were just part of her game. "I think I might have changed my mind."

"Yeah?"

She nodded.

Whatever it was, it worked for Shaw.

They made it to the entrance of the girl's apartment building. Except when the girl invited her inside, Shaw froze.

It all felt a little too familiar.

There she was again, standing opposite a pretty girl who can't quite look her in the eye. When their eyes did meet, her palms tingled causing her to rub them against her dress.

But she decisively said yes because she refused to let Caroline haunt her. She told the girl she had to make a call first, citing an excuse about a roommate who would get worried if she didn't come home.

She dialed Harold's number.

"Can you run a background check on a Madeline Khoo? She's a graduate student at Columbia."

Caroline isn't even her name, Shaw thought as Harold tapped away on his keyboard. Nor is it Samantha Groves. Those were just people she pretended to be.

Her name is Root.

Not Robin Farrow. That's the name she was forced to take. The name Shaw used out of spite so she'd know how little Shaw cared for the person behind all those fake names. Except that plan had one massive flaw; pretending that Caroline/Jane/Kelly/Robin/Samantha wasn't real had only made it harder for Shaw to chase away her ghost.

She's a real living person with a name;

"Root," Shaw murmured under her breath.

Not a ghost.

Only ghosts can haunt. Real living persons can't haunt each other.

"Did you say something, Miss Shaw?"

"Nothing. It's..." she shakes her head despite knowing that Finch can't see her, "nothing, Finch."

"May I inquire why you are seeking information on Miss Khoo?"

"I want to make sure her story checks out. Does it?"

"It seems so. Did she give you any reason to doubt—"

"Thanks, Harold," Shaw said and ended the call.

Then she walked over to Madeline to say goodbye. This time, she didn't lie.

"I shouldn't have said yes in the first place."

Madeline looked confused but she nodded.

"Sorry," Shaw mumbled as Madeline shut the door, catching a glimpse of an awkward smile through the gap.

Shaw sighed. Her smile was so close to being right.

 

 

 

As it turns out, the right smile is closer than she thought. He is cute as a button and is a good enough cuddler that she doesn't mind cuddling with him. It still takes her a whole day to convince Harold that she would take good care of him, but it's worth it.

Bear is the best company she's had in a long time. For one, he doesn't use his laptop in bed when she's trying to sleep, and while he does have a tendency to take up more space than he needs, at least he doesn't hog the covers.

And he's warm.

She used to be able to sleep alone.

Actually, that used to be the only way she could sleep.

Whenever she had some late night company, she would just slip out of bed when they had fallen asleep and sleep on the floor instead. In the morning, she would just tell them that she must have accidentally rolled off the side of the bed the night before. It's a long time habit, she would tell them. One that she could never seem to break.

Caroline—no, Root. Root didn't believe her.

One morning, Shaw found her sleeping on the floor next to her. Shaw noticed the careful distance she had put between them, like she was afraid to cross some invisible boundary around Shaw.

"I guess I fell off the bed too," she had murmured as she woke up, like she had rehearsed the line repeatedly as she was falling asleep, even though she's further from the bed than Shaw.

On their next meeting, as Shaw was trying to unlock the door to a hotel room for the third time and failing for the third time because Root already had her hands under Shaw's shirt, Root whispered, "I get the floor tonight."

Shaw was too distracted by Root's eager hands that she barely heard it.

When Root tossed a pillow onto the floor and Shaw frowned at her, she said, "I know why you don't sleep on the bed and it's okay, but I don't think it's fair for your back."

"Oh, for god's sake, get on the bed," Shaw had said agitatedly when her attempt at cluelessness failed at changing Root's mind. "Just stay on your side and I promise I won't 'fall'."

The thing that Shaw hated about someone pressed up against her when she's sleeping was the heat from the other person's body. She'd always wake up at some point feeling like she'd taken a nap in the desert at noon.

It doesn't really go away when the person doesn't touch you, but it burns less and becomes more like warmth.

It took her awhile to get used to it but she can't seem to break her promise even though their relationship was built on lies (her lies, she thought at the time). Before she knew it, she was waking up feeling too cold instead of too hot on nights when Root wasn't by her side.

But she is starting to relearn her old ways, and nights with Bear are exactly the thing she needs to ease herself into it.

 

 

 

For someone who has such a quiet voice, Reese sure has a huge mouth. She sends a glare at him through the window but he doesn't seem to catch it and continues to stand obliviously outside while Zoe and Carter try to pry the details of her broken marriage out of her.

They're not being too subtle about it.

"You both ought to be ashamed of yourselves," she says. "Your jobs are to get information out of people and I have to say you're lousy at it."

"You're not a perp," Carter says.

"Not a client," Zoe chimes in. "We're friends hanging out talking about our lives."

Carter nods in agreement.

"Sure," Shaw replies. "How about we talk about how long you're gonna let him wait out there?"

Zoe shrugs. "He promised to walk me home."

"How chivalrous," Shaw mutters, shifting her eyes towards Carter. She already knows how Zoe is going to react. It's Carter's reaction that she is interested in.

It's not a glare that Carter sends towards Zoe, but something close; it has a steely protective quality to it that makes Zoe go, "Fine, I should probably get going."

Then Carter smiles. She too needs to get home to her son.

"Nice work tonight, ladies," Shaw tells them.

She can't remember the last time she's had the opportunity to work with people who made her job so much easier, who she also genuinely enjoys the company of.

Outside, Zoe takes John's arm while Carter waves a silent goodbye at him. Shaw doesn't know how he does it; to get these two amazing, brilliant women to care so deeply for him. She only has that one liar in a mental hospital.

She doesn't let herself ponder further. He's a lucky guy and she's sort of happy for him. In their line of work, good fortune turns bad in a blink of an eye and she hopes he has the sense to appreciate it before it gets taken away from him.

She's lucky too, she thinks as she looks down at Bear.

These past few days have been her good fortune. She hasn't thought about Root until about a half an hour ago. Sure, her stomach hasn't stopped doing backflips ever since Root started plaguing her mind again, but she won't let that ruin the night.

She takes another sip of whiskey to burn off the bitterness that is fighting to take over her. She's determined to get one night of good sleep, snuggled up against the fluffy beast that is staring affectionately back at her.

But like she said, for people like her, good fortune turns bad in a blink of an eye. It doesn't really care if you've slept a total of three hours in the past week.

She's just about to fall asleep when her phone rings.

"Someone better be dying," she groans into her phone.

"I'm afraid it's worse, Miss Shaw," Harold replies. "Your wife has escaped."

 

 

…

 

 

When she shows up at the library to return Bear, Harold greets her with that face he makes that is something between exasperation and shock.

"What?" she mutters as she takes off the leash on Bear's collar.

Bear rushes towards Harold.

"Bear, zit!" Harold commands before Bear could tackle him. The dog complies but looks at Harold hopefully. When Harold pats his head, his mouth stretches into a content smile. Harold presses his lips together to suppress his own smile, but they curl up eventually.

"I wasn't able reach you after you hung up on me," he says as he scratches Bear's chin.

"I turned off my phone," Shaw replies curtly.

"May I remind you of the danger Miss Groves poses if left to her own devices?"

"I am well aware," Shaw exhales, "but I'm done with her. I can't chase her again. If you need someone to do that, ask Reese. I will cover his numbers if you need me to."

"That is..." Harold says, his eyes shifting downward for a brief moment before looking up at her again. "Regrettable, but I think Mr Reese will do just fine."

"Yeah, Cole can help him out."

"Have you heard from him?"

"Reese? Isn't he your bodyguard?"

"Mr Reese does not work for me as you do not work for me. It is more of a partnership," Harold says. "But no, I meant Mr Cole. I haven't been able to reach him since yesterday."

Shaw's eyebrows crinkle. "What do you mean? He said you put him on a number."

"No," Harold says, shaking his head. "He mentioned to me the day before yesterday that he needed to attend to a personal matter. And when he didn't answer my calls last night, I assumed it was at your request."

"He's a big boy. I don't—" Shaw grits her teeth like it could hold her brain back from the huge freaking leap it is about to make.

Not again. Not Cole.

Harold doesn't look surprised, just sympathetic. Like he had made the same conclusion as the one Shaw is just now trying to process many hours ago.

"We don't have enough information yet," he says unconvincingly.

Shaw sniggers. Then she walks towards Harold and picks up the lone file sitting on his keyboard.

"New number?"

 

 

 

But of course she went to Cole's apartment.

She picks up a frame containing a photograph of a middle-aged couple. There are horizontal creases at the middle from the many times it was folded to fit Cole's back pocket.

The couple in the picture are his parents. She never asked why their faces are blurry but he explained it to her anyway. He couldn't keep his hands steady when taking the picture. He was so excited that his father had finally let him use the family camera.

His father had bought him a roll of film and told him he could take whatever picture he wanted. On the condition that he'd use his own money to get it developed. Except for the last few frames, every picture on the roll was either blurry, like the one he took of his parents, or too dark.

She didn't ask why he chose that photograph as the one thing from his past to carry with him either.

But again, he explained without her prompting,

"Back then when you take a picture, you just click and hope you don't mess it up so it was a big deal for me because it meant my dad trusted me."

"Did he change his mind when he saw the pictures?" Shaw had asked.

"No," Cole shook his head. "He said everything has a learning curve and it's okay to mess up. That really stuck with me. When I was younger, I had this," he said, looking fondly at the photograph, "taped up to my wall. So I'm reminded of what my dad used to say whenever I messed up."

"Now?"

Cole had chuckled uncomfortably at her question. "Can't exactly make mistakes in this job, can we?" he swallowed, folding the picture. "But it's a nice feeling to remember."

Shaw tosses the frame back to the coffee table and misses. It lands on the floor, breaking the glass.

"Shit."

The picture falls out when she picks up the frame, along with a piece of paper. She unfolds it and damns Cole's soul when she reads the 'Dear Sam' on top.

She's not very fond of post-fuck up explanations. It doesn't do much except relieve the fucker up of their guilt. The one fucked just gets some stupid apology and more worthless information in their brain.

She crumples up the paper and thinks of throwing it away, but pockets it instead. Then she stomps into Cole's bedroom to tear it apart for clues on where he has disappeared off to.

She finds nothing.

 

 

 

It's strange shifting careers when your new job is the exact opposite of your previous job. Sure it requires the same skill set, but everything else is starkly different.

For one, she knows the people she saves. They're not just some private school kid or some guy on a train. They are a Mark or a Kamala or an Abdullah or an Emily.

Or a Genrika.

A finger pokes at her shoulder.

"I thought you might be a robot," the kid says.

Funnily enough, it's not the first time someone's said that about her.

 

 

 

But different is not necessarily a bad thing.

Having the faces of the people she's trying to save etched into her brain somehow makes her more invested in them.

She's not sure if that's a good thing—a few hours ago, she had explicitly ignored Harold's instruction to seek medical help from one of his doctor friends—but she's not sure if it is a bad thing either.

When Gen holds out her grandfather's treasured medal, Shaw's shoulders tense and her arms freeze at her sides.

"I'm just not wired for this kind of stuff, kid," she admits honestly when Gen takes her hand and puts the medal in it.

Something twists in her gut—something she's come to recognize as guilt when she can't reciprocate to emotion colored gestures.

She's not sure if it's a bad thing because the kid smiles at her. Gen tells her it's okay and the knots in her stomach untwist themselves.

And when Gen says, "…the voices are there. You just have to listen," Shaw is taken aback by how perceptive the kid is compared to most adults she has encountered.

Maybe it's the surprise of it all but she reaches out for the kid and pulls her into a crushing hug. It's kind of a relief. The only two people who came close to the same observation as Gen had left her. She didn't think she would be lucky for the third time, especially since the first two times were duds anyway.

When Shaw returns to her apartment, she gets a text message,

"How much trouble would I get into if I bug the school?"

"None if you don't get caught," she sends back. "But don't tell Harold I said that."

She throws herself onto the bed and is reminded of the medal in her pocket when her thigh hits the bed. She fishes it out and hangs it on her bedside lamp.

Her phone buzzes.

"Good night, Shaw."

"You know spies only communicate with each other when necessary, right?" she types and sends.

"This is necessary," is Gen's reply. "I'm anticipating the risk for a future operation. The good night is just polite."

Shaw just sends a 'good night' in response, chuckling as she types.

She's not sure if this is a good thing but it's definitely not a bad thing.

 

 

 

It's a recurring theme in her life. She can never feel too good about herself. By now she should have taken it as a warning sign—that rare little peak on the otherwise monotonous graph of her emotions—of an oncoming doom.

The 'miss me' that Root had uttered just before she tased Shaw echoes in Shaw's ears as she is waking up from her forced hibernation.

"Sorry about that."

"Which part?" Shaw asks. "Our marriage, or whatever this is?"

Root chuckles. "I had to make sure that you'd hear me out. She needs our help."

"She?"

"The Machine's given me a mission and step one is to team up with you."

"Pass. Trust issues."

Root leans over, not so accidentally pressing her left breast against Shaw's shoulder.

"I think I can help with that," she murmurs, cutting the ziptie off Shaw's wrist.

As soon as both her hands are free, Shaw snatches the knife from Root's hand and pushes her against the car door.

"This is the part where you give me one good reason why I should believe anything you say," Shaw growls.

"April 15," Root says, smiling. "You bought me flowers on your way home. We're three days shy from our wedding anniversary but you didn't buy the flowers for that. You bought it because you remembered that it was the day we visited my friend's grave in Bishop."

" _Fake_ friend," Shaw points out.

"But you've done your research. You know it's also the date of Hanna Frey's disappearance."

"So?"

"So I would have been very touched if I had actually received it."

"No one told you to have a last minute business trip and not come home for five days."

Root's smile falters. "The day after our anniversary," she goes on, "you ran five miles just to get rid of the flowers so I wouldn't find them in the trash."

"I'm still not hearing a reason," Shaw says, pressing on the knife harder.

"The Machine trusts me. I couldn't have known about—"

"Yeah, but you knew about me. For all I know, you had me followed during the entirety of our marriage."

"I didn't," Root swallows. Shaw can feel her heartbeat going faster. "I…" she hesitates, "I lied, Sameen. I only found out about you when I infiltrated the Office of Special Counsel."

"Why would you lie about that?"

"I was hurt, so I wanted to hurt you back."

"So what? Now you're done hurting me?"

Root nods carefully, making sure that the knife doesn't cut through her skin. “The Machine tells me there is a new category; one that if we ignore would cost a lot of people their lives. You’ve worked with her for years. She has never been wrong.”

Shaw grimaces. As much as she hates to admit it, Root’s right. The Machine has never given Shaw bad intel, and that one time she thought it did, it wasn’t the Machine but her bosses.

“Fine,” Shaw says, pulling the knife away from Root's neck. “I’ll forget how I feel about you but when this is over, you better hope I don’t remember."

 

 

…

 

 

"I. Need. You."

It burns her with rage that only five months ago she had longed to hear that voice saying those three words to her. She was even desperate enough for them to bring it up during one of their fake therapy sessions.

Or maybe it's the spaghetti blowtorch burning beneath both their chins.

"Then you should get out of my way," Shaw snaps.

Root's lips twitch into a smirk as if recalling something funny. Shaw has a pretty good guess on what it is.

"Don't," Shaw warns as she turns to begin cutting into the steel gate.

"I was just going to give you these," Root says, holding out a pair of sunglasses. "For your eyes."

Shaw snatches them out of Root's hand.

"Let me," Root mutters when Shaw is unable to unfold the sunglasses with one hand. Shaw only grips them tighter, prompting Root to tell her, "This would go so much faster…"

Shaw lets go, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence.

"Thank you," Root says, smiling tightly. She unfolds the sunglasses and takes the liberty to put them on Shaw.

Shaw adjusts the sunglasses as she turns towards the gate again. Another memory comes to mind—one that is not as rage inducing as the one before but still quite an annoying memory, but somehow it doesn't pile on the anger that has kept growing since she found out the truth about the woman who shared her bed for the past three years.

Instead, it makes her feel something she hasn't felt since her father died.

A sort of hollowness inside of her that wasn't there before.

(And a very very slight fondness that almost goads her into smiling but at the same time somehow causes a painful twinge somewhere inside her chest.)

When she has finished carving a door out of the gate, Root offers, "We have some time. Wanna go for a bite? My treat. You pick."

"Sandwich," Shaw replies without a second thought. "I know a place."

 

 

 

Root takes another bite of her sandwich even though she hasn't finished swallowing her last bite. Then she stares at the layers of meat between the bread like she's in love before taking another bite, and it seriously looks like she's making out with the sandwich. Shaw almost snorts before she remembers not to.

"This is really good," Root moans as she chews.

"Have you been feeding on crap again?" Shaw asks.

"You mean my yummy diet of MSG and sugar? Then yes, I'm enjoying it immensely now that I don't have your voice in my head constantly telling me how my body deserves better."

"Yeah, well, you brought it upon yourself."

"Which one? Your voice in my head or the reminders that I should be taking better care of myself?"

Shaw doesn't answer, just takes a bite of her own sandwich. The spicy mustard tastes bland on her tongue.

"Don't worry," Root says. "I make sure to eat my greens at least once a week."

"You can choke on those frozen veggies for all I care," Shaw mutters.

Root smirks, tilting her head sideways. "You know me too well."

"Do I?"

 

 

 

"Of course you do," Root answers five hours later when Shaw almost nods off while waiting to be picked up by CIA operators.

Shaw has forgotten that she had even asked the question. "Are you talking to The Machine?" she asks.

It comes back to her when Root's always reading gaze shifts downwards. It sweeps sideways before ending back up on Shaw again. Root chuckles. Her laugh sounds weird when it doesn't come with that evil glint in her eyes.

"Nothing," Root drawls. "I wasn't talking to anyone."

"...okay," Shaw replies, closing her eyes again.

She doesn't really sleep during missions but when the mission involves waiting, there is always talking, and she doesn't feel particularly chatty at the moment. Cole used to talk her ear off. Sometimes when she wanted him to stop, she made it clear to him that she wasn't listening by pretending to sleep. Right now she is hoping the same trick will stop the conversation before it even starts.

"Do you..." This woman really can't take a hint. "Do you remember that time when I came home and took all my clothes off at the door?"

"Yeah, what was that about?" Shaw asks, eyes still shut.

"Oh, you enjoyed it."

Shaw's eyes roll back under her eyelids. Fine, she admits that she did enjoy it the first ten times, but then everything about that first year was fun. It was supposed to be. They were newlyweds who were discovering new and exciting things about each other.

Shaw opens her eyes. "Your point?"

"I just finished a job; a job that left me a little confused about who I was." Root chuckles. "It happens from time to time, these tiny identity crises. I would usually get over it pretty quickly, maybe within a day or two. However, for that particular time, it happened while I was married to you. I opened the door and there you were, _my_ home and I was suddenly in a rush."

Root pauses.

"In a rush for?" Shaw asks in a matter of fact tone so not to appear like she is on the edge of her seat, waiting for the follow up to that statement.

"To be myself, whoever that may be, because I looked down and I realized that the jacket I was wearing wasn't even mine."

"Because you stole it."

"No. Well, yes I did steal it but it's less about who owned the jacket and more about who picked it."

"Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there," Shaw cuts in before Root could start another sentence. "'Cause I'm sensing a philosophical rant coming up and I don't care for that."

Root's lips stretch into a smile. She tilts her head sideways.

"What's that smile for?" Shaw asks.

Root shakes her head as if to say 'nothing'.

"I just," she says instead, "didn't think you'd listen to me for this long."

The smile is infuriating. So infuriating that Shaw leaps out of her seat and pushes Root against the plush sofa. Root's eyes widen in surprise, but the smile doesn't falter, or if it did, it only took a nanosecond to return.

Shaw isn't sure what it is that she is about to do.

Until she does it.

Even then it doesn't fully register until she notices her mouth hungrily sucking on Root's lip. So she pulls back.

She isn't sure what she's thinking. Root's eyes are gleaming with something like hope, and she's not too pleased with it. Root must have sensed it because she blinks the glimmer out easily.

"It's okay," she says.

"What's okay?" Shaw asks.

Root raises her hand, slowly…carefully, and Shaw flinches when it reaches her face, but Root holds her hand steady, far enough as not to touch skin but close enough that Shaw could still feel it. Root trails her fingers down Shaw's cheeks, still not quite touching. Her eyes are dark and her expression blank.

"This," Root murmurs. "If you want a mindless fuck that means nothing, I can make it happen and after we're done, you will never hear me mention a peep about it."

Shaw chuckles. "Is that even possible?"

"I put on personalities like I put on clothes."

"What does that even mean?"

"We can go back to my philosophical rant if you—"

Another kiss, but this time it's Root who withdraws. She wags a finger at Shaw's lips.

"I _need_ you to tell me what you want."

"You know I'm really good at spelling things out with my tongue."

Root's lips quirk up slightly. "I am well aware but I still need to hear it."

Shaw sighs. She considers for a moment to just lie—she's horny for the first time in months, and honesty will only breed feelings, feelings that would render their tentative meaningless sex pointless—but then she looks into Root's blank eyes and realizes that it isn't what she wants. She wants hurt in them. Hurt is sort of a feeling, and those feelings that her honesty will trigger don't have to be one-sided.

Root may be done hurting her but she's not done hurting Root.

"I want my wife," she says. "Not the warm one who looks at me like I'm everything or the cold shrew. I want the one who thinks shedding her clothes will shed the armor she's worn for so long that she thinks it's her skin."

Root's eyebrows wrinkle in confusion.

"Except," Shaw continues. "When that armor is made of people—people, as you said, you put on whenever the situation suits you, what is left is not you. It's not even a person. It's just this pathetic doll that's waiting to be dressed and groomed because that's the only way that it could get a taste of humanity."

The sting in Root's eyes doesn't bring the joy that Shaw had expected. There is gratification but it doesn't last too long. It's gone before she could revel in it.

But she smirks when Root asks, "So you want to fuck a doll?"

Which she answers with, "And there she is."

The sting remains in Root's glassy eyes, but she maintains her composed expression.

"I can be that," she says quietly and drops her arm.

Those words and the way Root just lies under Shaw, convincingly lifeless, are like a cold burst of water hitting her squarely in the face. She immediately gets off the sofa and stands next to it with her arms crossed, not quite looking at Root.

Root sits up, a surprisingly transparent alarm all over her features. "I thought…" she trails off.

"I thought…too," Shaw offers as a non-answer. "But apparently not."

She makes a mental note; hurting the one who hurts you doesn't work.

 

 

 

Still, she can't resist punching Root unconscious.

It's payback for the tazing. She is well aware now that the other things need way more complicated handling than a simple 'you hit me so I hit you back'.

 

 

…

 

 

Root sleeps through the night, partly because of the muscle relaxant that Shaw injected into her. The rest, Shaw suspects, is because she hasn't had a good night sleep in a while. She shackles Root to her bed with ropes. It takes a little bit of creativity since her bed doesn't have posts to anchor the ropes to.

Beyond securing Root to her bed for the night, she has no idea what to do with her so called ex-wife. She'll think about it later when she's had some sleep herself.

 

 

 

"Good morning."

The last time Shaw checked on her watch, it's five. She must have dozed off shortly after. She puts both feet to the floor and drags herself to the bathroom, ignoring the pair of eyes that are following her.

"I'm surprised that you brought me to your home," Root shouts.

Shaw peeks her head out of the bathroom.

"This is temporary," Shaw says.

"You always knew how to make a girl feel special."

"I thought I'm a workaholic who can't see joy outside her work."

God, she's supposed to be over this passive aggressive shit by now.

"Well, you're working now," Root drawls, raising her eyebrows. She pulls her arms down. Her elbows barely reach her head before they're pulled back up again. "Wow, I didn't know you are so good at this."

"You forgot about Harbin."

Root frowns. "Harbin?"

"It was January. 2011. You were supposed to be there for the Ice Festival."

"I'm sorry…" Root says, shaking her head. If Shaw didn't know any better, she would have thought Root sounded sincere. If Root isn't tied down and working on an escape plan, Shaw might have believed that she's really sorry for forgetting.

"You wanted to see the pretty ice sculptures, I believe the lie was."

"I remember that," Root beams. "You almost got killed climbing the stairs to that ice tower they had."

Shaw snickers. "Of course you'd remember that."

"That's not the only thing I remember."

"What else then?" Shaw asks.

"I remember writing our wishes on red ribbons and hanging them on an ice column. And I know I wasn't supposed to but I peeked at your ribbon. Do you still remember what you wrote?"

Shaw shrugs. "You tell me."

"You wrote…future Mrs Turing."

Shaw rolls her eyes. "Liar," she mutters before going back into the bathroom.

Root chuckles. "You were so careful about covering your wish. I didn't get a chance to see it."

Shaw pinches some toothpaste out of its tube. She brushes her teeth without commenting on Root's statement. Then she washes her face.

As she wipes her face, she muffles into her towel, "I saw what you wrote."

"Did you?" Root asks.

Shaw didn't think she would hear it. When she exits the bathroom, she sees Root pulling on her ropes again.

"Would you stop?" Shaw tells her.

"We've gone off topic."

"You're not getting out of those."

"Wasn't trying to," Root says, letting ropes pull her arms upwards again.

Shaw goes to her closet. She picks one out of the five black tank tops in it.

"I miss the colors you used to wear," Root comments as if she can see the contents of the closet. At her current position, it's physically impossible.

"You went through my stuff?"

"Of course not."

"When?"

"Prior to our encounter with Vigilance."

"You mean when you tazed and kidnapped me?"

"I needed a place to hide while I waited for you to fall asleep."

"Liar."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. Those Russian guys did a number on you," Root says. "It's perfectly understandable if you missed me."

"You didn't hide in my closet," Shaw replies. Every single thing in her loft is left the way it is not without some deliberation, however random the placing might be. Root didn't enter the loft before she returned from Gen's boarding school. It was after. Shaw is always willing to admit her carelessness as long as it's not the wrong one.

"Fine," Root exhales. "I didn't. But you keep wearing black. Concluding that your wardrobe mainly consists of dark clothes isn't exactly a huge leap."

"You been stalking me?"

"Well, when you have a super intelligence your ear…"

"Right."

"Is that jealousy?"

"I'm not jealous of the Machine."

"Well, if anyone's jealous," Root says, "it's Harold."

Shaw nods. "Finch is pretty insistent on severing your connection to the Machine."

"I have no earthly idea why," Root intones, and Shaw can't tell whether she's being serious or not.

"Besides worrying that you might blow up the world with something that powerful on your side?"

"That is not how our relationship work."

"Then how does it work?" Shaw asks.

"Not that I'm not pleased that you're taking an interest with my relationship with the Machine but we were discussing something else and I'd like to finish that first. Something about red ribbons and me squirming helplessly as you eat my pussy."

"So you do remember."

"But I don't remember your knotting skills to be this advanced," Root says, testing her bonds again. "I believe I wiggled my way out of your knots while you were sleeping."

"I didn't want to freak you out. You seemed so…vanilla."

"Care for a replay?" Root asks. "I'd like to prove you wrong."

"I think that assumption went out the window when you teased me with an iron."

"The offer still stands."

"Not happening," Shaw says and saunters back towards the bathroom.

 

 

 

"I'm not sure if I heard you right," Carter says. "Could you repeat what you said?"

"I sort of have my ex-wife tied to my bed right now and she's already driving me nuts."

Carter sighs. "You guys have to learn to keep me out of your illegal activities. In case you don't remember, I'm a cop. It means that if I have knowledge about an ongoing crime, I have to do something."

"This is Root, Carter. In case _you_ don't remember, she kidnapped Finch."

"It doesn't mean you can keep her as your prisoner. That's what prisons are for."

"Tried that. Sort of," Shaw says. "Didn't work."

"And when was this?"

"I'll tell you if you tell me how your partner is doing."

There is a brief pause before Carter answers. "He's fine."

"HR must have been pissed when they found out that he gave 'em bad intel."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You should tell Fusco about him."

"I really don't—"

"Carter," Shaw says. "The Russians have a list of all the kids they sent to the police academy. Do you really think I'm gonna miss your partner's name?"

"It's _my_ fight."

"I know. And this is my mess. I just need a little advice."

"Where are you?" Carter asks.

"Why does that matter?"

"If you have Root tied to your bed, there is no way in hell you're leaving her alone."

"In the bathroom," Shaw mumbles.

"What's that?"

"Bathroom!" Shaw hisses. "I'm in my bathroom."

"Are you seriously hiding from your tied up ex-wife?"

"I'm _not_ hiding. I'm just— it's a private conversation."

"Whatever you say."

"What do I do? Obviously I can't keep her here but I can't let her go."

"What did Harold say?"

"He said he can have a Faraday cage ready in a day."

"WHAT?"

"A Faraday cage is—"

"I know what a Faraday cage is. I'm assuming it's necessary to keep Root's hands of any tech."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm more curious about how long Harold is planning to keep her in that cage."

"Harold thinks he can rehabilitate her."

"Rehabilitate how?"

"She used a drug lord to avenge her friend's murder when she was fourteen. _Fourteen_ , Carter."

"I know," Carter says irritatedly. "I wrote a report on it."

"She's not the kind of person you can just let out into the world to do as she pleases. Unless…" Shaw sighs.

"Unless you can make sure that she's not going to leave a trail of bodies behind her. I get that. Believe me. I get it more than you know but," Carter pauses. "Genius that he is, I don't think Harold is trained in psychotherapy. What makes him think that he can 'rehabilitate' her? What if he can't? How long is he going to keep her caged?"

"I don't know," Shaw admits. "We haven't really thought that far."

"Do you know what it sounds like? A man keeping a woman locked up _for her own good_?"

"I know but—"

"You don't have a choice."

"Not at the moment."

"Then find the moment. Hell if you and John can find your place in the world and a purpose that doesn't involve you adding more suffering in the world, maybe Root can too."

Shaw snorts. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

"Nope. But I know this. You don't get to be the jury who determines her guilt, and Harold doesn't get to be the judge who punishes her."

 

 

 

On the way to the library, with Root in the trunk, Shaw keeps telling herself that she doesn't have a choice. She silently wishes for the Machine to intervene. To take Root away so she doesn't have to go through with the one crappy option that she's left with. Why not? The Machine hasn't disappointed her so far. No, the Machine did better than that. It— _she_ saved her life.

Unfortunately, nothing happens. In fact, her journey is so suspiciously smooth that she can't help but think that the Machine _wants_ Root to be brought to Harold. She supposes even an artificial intelligence can have a complicated relationship with their parent.

"I didn't think you would be amenable to my suggestion," Harold says.

"It occurred to me that keeping a prisoner in my loft isn't really practical."

Root pouts. "There goes my dream." Her pout turns into a smile when her gaze shifts towards Harold. "Hi, Harry."

"Miss Groves," Harold mutters, his body tensing.

"My ride here was stuffy and, I mean no offense to your driving Sameen, quite bumpy. Thank you for asking."

"Yes, your comfort is indeed our priority," Harold replies.

"It better be," Shaw blurts out, surprising herself.

"I'm sorry, Miss Shaw?" asks Harold.

"Oh, we both heard her," Root interjects. "My wife is worried about my well-being."

" _Ex_ -wife," Shaw corrects her. "And I'm not worried. I just want to do this right. Or as right as it can be. If I wanted to send people to tiny cells with cots that barely qualify as beds, I'd apply for a job with the CIA."

"I still think it's sweet," Root says.

Shaw rolls her eyes. "On second thought—"

"I assure you, comfort will not be an issue," Harold interrupts before she could finish her thought. "And I also have provided Miss Groves with all the books she will need to fill her time in the coming months."

"That's great for her brain, but how about her more physical needs?"

"Yes, Harry. I need my conjugal visits."

Harold clears his throat uncomfortably. "I assume you are referring to Miss Groves' fitness needs."

Shaw nods, ignoring Root's remark.

"The books include some home exercise manuals," Harold adds. "Whether she uses it or not is up to her."

"That's good enough for me," Shaw replies.

"Do I have any say in this?" Root asks.

"Umm, let's see…" Shaw pretends to consider it for a moment. "No." She then grabs Root's shoulder. "Lead the way, Finch."

 

 

…

 

 

She kept thinking. If she didn't give all those weapons to Carter, maybe she wouldn't be running around the city looking for the dirty cop who killed her friend.

It's bullshit, she knows. Carter's resourceful. She would have gotten the firepower she needed elsewhere. If Shaw cares to rationalize it, her supply of arsenal to Carter probably extended her friend's life by a few days. Elsewhere might have been a weapons dealer or an evidence locker, which could have alerted HR to Carter's plan sooner.

That's bullshit too. Carter's dead and there is nothing she can do to change it. The only thing she can do now is prevent another friend's death.

She searches the library for clues of John's whereabouts. There's nothing because he never stopped by, but she knew that already. John has a very specific goal in mind. He isn't going to show up in the place where he might run into the one person who can talk him out of executing said goal.

The real reason that she's here is—

"Hi, Sameen."

She lets herself feel it. The relief from hearing that voice. Oh, how she has missed it.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five—

"I'm sorry about your friend."

Moment's over.

"Who told you?"

Root doesn't answer.

"Are you talking to the Machine?"

"Harold has made it impossible for me to—"

"I don't care about all that. I just need to know if you're talking to the Machine."

"I don't exactly call it talking."

"She beeps at you. Whatever."

"That's not it." Shaw hears it. Loud and clear. The vulnerability in Root's tone. "She's not talking to me. At all."

"Damn it," Shaw sighs.

"That wasn't the reaction I was hoping for," Root says, "but more than what I expected."

"No," Shaw snaps. "I _need_ The Machine. You're supposed to be my direct line to her but she's not talking to you so…"

"Right," Root mutters. "You're looking for tall, dark and stupid."

The ridicule in her words didn't quite fit her tone. Shaw might have misheard but Root sounded…sorry. Root lifts one foot forward but then quickly drags it back again, a grimace flickering in her face that Shaw would have missed if she hadn't spent the past three years studying that face.

"I thought The Machine wasn't talking to you."

"It's Harold. He's too easy to read."

"Speak for yourself."

Shaw's hand hovers over the lock and her other hand fiddles with the key she swiped from Harold. Her own key is somewhere under her bed. She thinks. The night Harold gave it to her, she heard it fall onto the floor as she was taking off her pants. She never looked for it. Her loft is for sleeping (and storage). Whenever she's in it, she's too tired to do anything but sleep.

She's aware that she was avoiding her ex-wife. Awareness means she wasn't in denial. She just wasn't doing anything about it. She knew that she would. Eventually. Because even during times when she tried her damndest to avoid Root, something happens that brings them back together.

It's like they're in some sickly fairy tale. Eternally bound together unless they found a way to break the curse.

The tip of Root's toes sit on top of the invisible line that would bring her a lot of pain if she crosses it.

Shaw stops fiddling with the key and grips it tight. It's her move.

Root literally cannot move further forward. Or she can but it will be highly unpleasant for her. But then that's never stopped her before. Maybe she'll even like it.

Shaw bites her lower lip as the image of Root moaning while writhing in pain pops up in her brain.

Damn it. This. Is. Not. The TIME.

Her friend is knocking, no, kicking down death's door, and here she is, lusting over her ex-wife. She tries to shove the image out of her head, but the harder she tries, the deeper it embeds itself into her brain.

"Sameen..." Root breathes. She hasn't moved an inch but her voice echoes the pained whimper in Shaw's daydream.

Fuck it.

 

 

 

"I can help, you know," Root moans into Shaw's ear.

Shaw digs her nails into Root's back and Root gasps.

"How?" Shaw sniggers. "The Machine is giving you the silent treatment."

"I am a woman of many skills," Root says, and as if trying to prove her point, she runs her thumb on Shaw's clit in that way she knows to be maddening for Shaw. Shaw shivers as Root murmurs, "Most of which I accumulated before meeting the Machine."

Shaw snorts.

Root looks up, eyebrows drawn together, and her fingers stop.

Shaw groans frustratedly. "Why'd you stop?" she asks.

"You laughed," Root answers, disbelief etched in her features. "Do you really think that I'm nothing without the Machine?"

"No," Shaw blurts out, partly because she's desperate for Root to resume what she was doing with her hand. The rest is because it's such a ludicrous statement. She spent months chasing the woman. She _knows_ what Root is capable of, with a super intelligence whispering in her ear and without.

Root retracts her hand out of Shaw, an eyebrow lifted.

Shaw sighs. "I was thinking that," she mumbles, "if we'd done this with the Machine in your ear, I would essentially be fucking a cyborg."

"Oh, I could make that happen," Root's voice lowers to a murmur, "if you get Harold to approve my release."

Shaw shakes her head. "You and I in bed together? Not happening—" She quickly grabs hold of Root's arm to stop her from retreating away. " _After_ this."

"Why?" Root asks. "If I repulse you so much, why not start now?"

"Because I need to clear my head and you're a good lay."

Root appears to think on it for a moment, then flashes that manic smile of hers. Shoulders bouncing, she chirps,

"Fair enough."

 

 

 

She didn't think much of it when Root said it to her but now that her mind is clear of the euphoric mess of hormones that comes with coitus, she is pissed.

She has the key. She knows how to disable Root's ankle bracelet. Why can't she be the one granting Root her freedom?

"Because," Root answers. "The Machine wants me here. For Harold. So I could talk to him—tell him about how she is trying to coax me into appreciating humanity. That she only has good intentions, and that he did not create a monster."

It hasn't been an hour since Root propositioned a three way between them and the Machine, but realizing that the Machine's opinion takes priority over hers is the thing that colors Shaw with envy.

"It's a waste of time," Shaw grumbles.

Root doesn't seem to notice the green eyed monster that is rearing its heads out of her shoulders.

"Harold needs to approve if you want the Machine to help you—to _help him_."

 

 

 

Harold throws a hissy fit. Shaw hasn't even gotten past the first line of her pitch when Harold goes into a whole speech that basically compares Root to Satan's right hand.

But he is as desperate as she is, if not more. That and a whole dollop of grief is the perfect recipe for bad judgement, but a bad judgement is all they've got. Besides, he was the one who made the devil. Her daddy issues are his problem now.

"I get that this is how you process," Shaw interrupts him, "but we're on a clock here."

Harold looks down, avoiding her gaze. "I just want to make sure that we are prepared," he says. He lifts his eyes back towards her, "for what may happen."

His eyes are bulging at her like she doesn't understand the disastrous ramifications of her proposal. Which is so wrong because if someone in the room understands it, it's her. She spent three years with Root, and in those three years she was so head over heels for the woman (even during times when they hated each other) that she never once suspected that Root wasn't who she said she was.

Harold is afraid that the world may burn down if they release Root into it. She's afraid that she'll be standing by Root's side as said burning happens.

A year ago, this would have been an easy decision. Do not let the murderous psychopath out of her cage at any cost. But today the cost is a friend.

Shaw almost laughs at the thought. She has friends now who she actually cares about. Like don't want them to die kind of care.

In med school, she had friends. You can drown if you don't have friends in med school, even if you know every textbook from front to back. They're good for study groups and occasional booty calls but it didn't bother her too much if they were to drop dead. She knows this because one of her classmates actually died from meningitis in her third year of med school. She went to the funeral, said nice things about the guy to his mom, and moved on with her life.

Eric thought he could just tough it out until they were done with finals. By the time he realized that something was seriously wrong with him, it was too late.

Maybe that's why his death didn't bother her. There was nothing she could have done for him.

But she could help John, even if the price is pretty steep. She is willing to pay for it.

Casting her eyes on Harold resolutely, she announces, "I'm in."


	4. Feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're such a cheapskate," Shaw tells her, peeling the bandage that is peeking from behind Root's shirt. The wound doesn't look too terrible. Her hand then reaches behind Root's ear but stops before her fingers touch the bandage there. "So you literally put The Machine inside of you."
> 
> One corner of Root's mouth curls up. "Jealous?"
> 
> Shaw huffs, shaking her head. It isn't jealousy. It is the sheer stupidity of it. Root has given The Machine ownership of one of her ears. What other body parts will she give to The Machine? And will it stop before she runs out of body parts to give?

Life is a gamble. You roll a die every time you make a choice, and for every choice you make, there is always a risk that it will lead to a catastrophically bad outcome. Safe people make choices where that risk is minute. Smart people calculate that risk and weigh it against the reward. People who don't think before they throw are either stupid or reckless, or both.

Then there are those who are dealt with a really crappy die that only has one good possible outcome and the other faces bear outcomes that range from bad to disastrous. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the good outcome has a probability that is so close to zero that it becomes more efficient to just round it to zero.

Shaw has her fair share of crappy dice, but the one she just rolled was probably the crappiest. So it's a huge relief when it landed on the one good outcome.

John is back on a bed, recuperating and healing from his physical injuries. There isn't much they can do for his emotional ones, but hey, he's alive and that's good enough for now.

Root is back in her cage. Voluntarily. Which is probably the biggest surprise of all. An outcome that Shaw had completely missed. She thought Root would disappear at least, even if she had changed her ways as she claimed and taken the side of humanity instead of against it.

Shaw had waited for the moment when Root would slip away. She had kept a diligent eye on her ex-wife, but she knew how sneaky Root could be, and even more with a super intelligence in her ear. She would be distracted with something, most likely a shower of bullets or multiple jabs on her body. Then as soon as she's taken care of the distraction, she would find Root gone.

But that didn't happen.

Root is still here.

Shaw didn't realize that she's been preparing for a goodbye until it dawned on her that it was wholly unnecessary. Root is staying, and Shaw is conflicted on whether to take it as a relief or an aggravation.

She decides on both.

"This doesn't change anything," she tells Root.

"Good, because I'm not staying for you," Root replies. "Or rather, I'm not staying to prove anything to you. You have made it painfully clear, numerous times, that we are over, and I think I am finally able to accept that."

It stings her quite a bit. But maybe that's part of it. Shaw has never broken up with anyone before. The only person she had a strong enough attachment to build a relationship with was also the person who tazed her twice and almost burned her with an iron.

"I'm glad," Shaw says, ignoring the lump in her throat, "that we are in agreement."

"Finally," Root replies.

"Yeah," Shaw murmurs. "Dr Sydney would probably be proud of us."

"And happy that you finally call him a doctor," Root quips.

"Right." Shaw's gaze falls on her feet for a moment and when she looks up, Root is staring really hard at the open book in front of her. "So I guess I'll leave you to your…book," she says, backing away towards the door.

Root hums her acknowledgement without looking up.

 

 

 

Harold, whether consciously or not, has loosened the security on Root. When he enters Root's cage, he doesn't inspect every corner, looking for some hole he's missed where The Machine could sneak in messages to Root. He doesn't do a daily test on Root's ankle bracelet to see if it has malfunctioned. He tests it weekly instead.

It's a sign of trust. Shaw's not sure whether it's a trust for Root, The Machine, or their relationship. Maybe he is starting to acknowledge that they might be good for each other. Or maybe he's just relieved that he could pawn off his clingy creation to someone else.

But he acts all surprised when he receives a number from Root, a number he could have gotten directly from The Machine if he wasn't ignoring her.

Harold has his concerns, but Shaw's main one is whether The Machine was always able to communicate with Root. If she was, why didn't she reach Root sooner? She didn't have to call every day or anything. Just you know, a card or a short message like 'hey, I know you exist'. Something like that would have made a world of difference for Root. She would probably have it framed if she can.

Not that Shaw cares about Root's emotional well-being. She is just concerned about a person she knows. Like her mother's cousin, who she has never met (at least, not as her mother's daughter) but apparently was very close to her mother when she was still living in Iran. Shaw would be concerned if she heard that something bad had happened to her Aunt Fairuza but it wouldn't affect her to the point that it disturbs her day.

That is the kind of concern she has for Root. So it bugs her when she sees Root being used as a humanity achievement badge by The Machine, but she doesn't say anything about it because well, Root basically volunteered for it. Who is she to tell Root to not let herself be used as a pawn in this bizarre father-daughter quarrel between Harold and The Machine? Shaw's not her wife (not anymore) and they're barely friends. So Root can do whatever she wants with her life. Except murder and maim innocents of course.

With the career path she's chosen, Shaw realizes that Root is always going to be a part of her life. She might as well get used to it, and work to have an amicable relationship with Root. Their relationship is only professional now. Anything beyond that is none of Shaw's concern.

No matter how unfairly she's being treated by the person and the machine who has made her their responsibility.

"Right?" she asks Dr Sydney who is on the screen in front of her.

"You are certainly put in a very tricky position," the therapist replies, "but remember, you signed the divorce papers." She did. _They_ did. They nullified the marriage between Sameen Shaw and Caroline Turing, if not for legal purposes, for closure purposes. "She is no longer your responsibility. Let her take care of herself."

 

 

 

It's an embarrassing fact about her that she would never admit to anyone, but she has a white knight complex. She's not sure where it came from. Maybe it's from looking on helplessly as her father choked on his own blood right in front of her. At least that's what the mandated psychiatrists she's seen in the past have told her. They said the trauma created an emotional buffer between her and other people, but at the same time, imbued her with a need to protect others from harm.

That's why she made medicine her first career choice, and when that didn't work out, she went into the military, the perfect place for people with white knight complexes like her.

She's not entirely convinced that that's the reason. She thinks it's innate—something she got from her father who was a military man himself. You inherit all kinds of crap from your parents, good and bad. Things you don't realize you got from them until you're standing in front of a food truck, listening to your mother narrating the process of stacking the ingredients of your favorite sandwich into perfection. Which incidentally was something you did two days ago to your friend.

Whatever the reason, it made her a person who gets wildly offended when she is the one saved instead of the saviour.

But there was a moment when her white knight disease inexplicably disappeared, and she was glad to see Root storm into the room where she was about to be executed, guns blazing. A little smile had popped out of a corner of her lips before Root even entered the room. Like somehow, she sensed that she was about to be saved.

No indignation came. No irritation. Just relief. And some appreciation.

Maybe it's because the moment went too soon. Between her being the saved and the saviour. She took the gun pointed at her as Root distracted the room with chaos.

Then Root fell.

A choice needed to be made.

Root.

Or Harold and Arthur.

"Go!"

_Let her take care of herself_. Dr Sydney's words echo in her ears.

Shaw turns and runs after Harold and Arthur. They need her protection more than Root. Root has a so called god in her ear. She will manage.

But Shaw waits by an open car door as Harold hotwires their getaway. In case--

Damn it.

No Root. Just Hersh and another one of Control's henchmen.

"We gotta move," she tells Harold.

She shoots the henchman and misses Hersh.

Before Hersh could get a good aim at her, she dives into the car.

And Harold drives off without looking back. No worries nor concern for the woman he kept imprisoned 'for her safety'.

 

 

…

 

 

 

The warehouse where Control brought Root was empty by the time she got there. She was too late. The whole place was wiped clean. There is not a single trace of Root or Control and her goons.

When she returns to the library, Harold tells her that Root is safe. He traced Root's call to somewhere in the eastern region of Europe, but he doubts that that is where she is. The call was probably bounced off several hundred cell towers before it reached Harold's phone. Root managed to slip out of Control's clutches, as she did Harold.

Shaw meets the news with a calm "Of course", even though her heart was drumming with worry as she raced back to the library.

Harold doesn't hide his panic. She can't worry about Root on top of Vigilance, the ISA, and Arthur's missing AI.

"Then don't," Shaw tells him.

"How can you say that?" Harold asks incredulously. "This is the woman who lied to you for three years."

"People change," she replies.

"I did not peg you as a person who believes in second chances."

"And I didn't peg you as the opposite. We've all been disappointed by unmet expectations."

Shaw's eyes catch the papers that the printer is spitting out.

"You taking numbers again?" she asks as she approaches the printer.

Harold nods. "But I was thinking about asking for Detective Fusco's assistance."

"I can do it."

"You haven't taken a break since our mission with Arthur," Harold answers. "If you keep going without proper rest, your judgement might be severely impaired."

Shaw sniggers. "Is that what you think is happening to me? I'm telling you to leave Root alone because my judgement is severely impaired?"

"No, that is not at all what I am implying," Harold says.

She's thinking the same thing too, but she's not going to give Harold the satisfaction.

"How about this?" she says. "I'll rest after one more mission."

"As I recall, you said something to same effect while searching for Miss Groves," Harold says.

"Well, I mean it this time," Shaw says.

She doesn't, but if it gets Harold to hand over the stack of paper that he's gathered neatly in his hands, then she'll say anything. She can't go back to her loft where her thoughts can overwhelm her. She needs to occupy her mind with a problem that she can solve, not one that she has decided to let go.

Harold sighs. "Since Mr Reese is gone, I suppose I am out of options."

 

 

 

John is back, and Shaw still hasn't gone home. When she's not chasing down a number, she sits at the library and peruses Harold's book collection, then googles them for their worth.

Harold is, unsurprisingly, filthy rich.

After a while, reading the books got old as the books themselves, so she starts reorganizing the library according to the books' worth, from most expensive to cheapest.

When Harold sees what she's done, he asks with that constipated face of his, "Is there something you want to tell me, Miss Shaw?"

"Don't worry, Finch," she tells him. "I'm not going to do anything to you. This is my backup plan. When your whole batman operation goes to shit, I'll know which section to grab. That whole shelf there can fund my retirement."

"I am pleased that you feel so at home here," Harold says, "but is it because you find your current accommodation to be lacking? I will gladly arrange for another one that is more to your liking if that is the case."

"The loft is fine," Shaw says. "I just don't want to miss out on any numbers."

As soon as she mentions numbers, Harold's face looks even more constipated.

Shaw narrows her eyes at him. "Do we have another number?"

"Mr Reese and I will handle it."

"Finch," Shaw says. "If you're still worried about me not sleeping, I got a few winks while reading your Shannon autobiography."

"Still, I am concerned that you are not resting properly," Harold says.

"Are you kidding?" Shaw says. "With all the amenities you've installed in this place, it's like living in a five, well, three star hotel. Which is not too bad considering the places that I've been. By the way, the water heating system in this place is phenomenal. Reese showered for like an hour this morning and there was still enough hot water left for me."

"I take it there is no changing your mind about the most recent number," says Harold.

Shaw nods.

"Well then," Harold continues. "Mr Reese and I are meeting at the safe house this afternoon. We are going to a black tie event tonight." He pauses like he's not sure whether to say what he's thinking. "This is in no way a judgement on your outfit choices, but—"

"Are you asking me if I have a fancy dress for the fancy party?" Shaw asks.

"Your lifestyle doesn't exactly require a lot of formal wear," Harold replies.

"What happened to no judging?"

"I am not judging," Harold says, squirming a little. "I am merely asking in case you don't have an appropriate outfit for the event."

"So you can leave me out of the mission?"

"No, you misunderstood me again, Miss Shaw," Harold answers. "I want to pay for it. The dress. If you don't have one."

"Oh, I have a dress," Shaw tells him.

Harold tries to hide his grimace, but he's not the most subtle person when it comes to facial expressions.

"I do!" Shaw snaps.

Nodding, Harold stammers unconvincingly, "I believe you."

 

 

 

Shaw doesn't believe in all that fairy tale stuff. She's seen too much to believe in happy endings, but it doesn't mean that someone else shouldn't get a chance at one.

Someone like Kelli Lin.

She and Shaw have a lot in common. Not just skill wise (though, there are some things that Kelli can do brilliantly that Shaw can't), but in their back stories too. They had both worked so hard at something that they were so sure would be their lives only to have their dreams crushed later on.

Except Shaw's story is less tragic than Kelli's. Shaw chose where she ended up after her medical career didn't pan out. Kelli didn't choose her career transition into crime. She was blackmailed into it.

Maybe that's why Shaw was drawn towards Kelli. It's her white knight disease acting up again. That, or she's horny. Either way, she wasn't going to act on it for the simple reason that it would be unprofessional.

But then Kelli slipped Shaw her number after it was all over, and the piece of paper that Kelli wrote it on is still in the pocket of one of her pants that she's left crumpled on the floor and unwashed for a week.

Kelli is no longer a damsel in distress. (She never was. She just needed a little help is all.) So Shaw can't blame it on her white knight complex anymore. To admit that she's horny is kind of crass, but that may not be too far from the truth.

"I don't know if people like you date," Kelli had said to her, "but I would love to have a drink with you."

The first time Shaw calls Kelli, they stay up all night talking. It's only when Shaw's hung up that it occurs to her that they never made plans to meet. The same thing happens the second time. And the third. On the fourth, Shaw immediately asks Kelli out for fear that she might forget again.

The line has been silent for one whole minute.

"It's fine if you don't want to," Shaw says.

"It's not," Kelli says, her breath hitching. "It's not that. I just don't know if I can leave Kai for a whole night. It is hard enough to send her to school every morning."

"I understand," Shaw says.

Then they resume their conversation from the night before about DIY lock picks. It turns out that there is something that Kelli can do in the 'real world': legal breaking and entering, otherwise known as locksmithing.

"The pay isn't as rewarding as stealing expensive art," Kelli says, "but it pays the bills. Besides, thanks to the trust that your friend set up, I don't have to worry about Kai's schooling."

"Yup," Shaw says. "He's one hell of a philanthropist, that Harold."

So maybe she isn't as horny as she thought she was; to be able to sit through a three hour phone conversation with Kelli, just listening about her day that is so normal while knowing that it might never go beyond late night phone calls.

Shaw never had normal. Even with a relatively normal upbringing, she was still the weird kid that people whisper about. But she thinks maybe she had a little bit of normal when she was fake married to Root.

They used to do what she's doing with Kelli. Shaw would be asleep when suddenly she's awoken by her phone buzzing at three in the morning. She couldn't blame Root for frequently calling her at the wrong time. She was the one who was never honest about where she was. But then Root might not have been honest about her whereabouts either. One time she called Shaw in the middle of the day when it's barely dawn where she's supposed to be.

They'd talk about their day even when Shaw's day wasn't over yet. Obviously, the things they talked about were all lies, but sometimes, late at night when Shaw is all alone with her thoughts, she would find herself missing those phone calls.

Shaw can't tell Kelli _everything_ , but she can be more honest than she was with Root.

"You must be bored with my dull stories," Kelli says.

"There was that story about how you had to break that guy out of his own bathroom," Shaw says, "and when you finally got the door to open, it turned out that he had cuffed himself to the curtain rod."

Kelli chuckles. "That _was_ an interesting day."

"See? Your stories aren't dull."

"They are, compared to yours."

"Actually, I need a little dull in my life," Shaw says. "It's…safer."

Kelli exhales. "I know the feeling."

 

 

…

 

 

 

After two weeks of only talking on the phone, Kelli finally agrees to go out with her. It's just coffee, which keeps things casual, and under daylight because Kai would be at school. Harold had kindly secured the little girl a place in a private school where the rich and powerful send their kids, which means the security is tight—Shaw had  verified that herself and confirmed to Kelli that her daughter should be safe inside the school.

It's happening on Thursday, five days after they agreed to meet for coffee and three days from now. They had agreed to not rush it, to allow them both time to consider the meeting carefully in case one of them decides not to go through it.

They still talk on the phone nightly, and while Shaw's mind is set on showing up for the coffee date, Kelli is showing signs of cold feet.

"What if this is too early?" Kelli had said one night.

It's understandable. She just got her daughter back. It's probably not a great idea to bring in a stranger into their lives so soon.

"It's just coffee," Shaw had told her. "It doesn't have to get any more serious than you don't want it to."

Because it is. It's just coffee. They won't get married just after spending one morning together.

Kelli had laughed. "You're right."

And Shaw didn't have to meet Kai right away. She was still recovering from her previous marriage after all. Even the thought of getting into a full on relationship with someone makes her shudder.

In fact, it's smart of Kelli to be cautious with her. While she knows everything about Kelli's past, she has yet to reveal the important parts of hers. She leaves out things on purpose, like how she was married before, but she didn't tell Kelli about how it ended. Just that it ended badly.

They talked more about their childhood and previous ambitions, and how much it shattered them when their pursuits for their respective dreams didn't work out. Those failures made them who they are.

Shaw is surprisingly fine with it even though it's kind of messed up that they are relating and connecting to each other through this nostalgia for their tragic pasts, and she wonders if anything were to happen between them, could they move forward to the present instead of clinging to these past versions of themselves that don't even like anymore?

That's what the coffee is for. To test their chemistry outside of late night conversations where they don't care to impress one another and let their tired brains spill out all those thoughts that they've shoved into its deepest and darkest recesses.

A packet of protein bar falls on the ground behind her.

She looks up to the open window above her. Root's head is sticking out of it.

"Heard you didn't have time for breakfast," Root's voice echoes through her ear piece. "Maybe you should cut those late night phone calls a lot shorter."

Shaw clears her throat.

"Are you spying on me?" Shaw asks.

"No, but The Machine is always listening," Root says.

"Tell her she should stay out of my private phone calls," Shaw replies in an almost growl.

"That isn't an option for her," Root tells her.

"Then tell her to keep her trap shut," Shaw says. "What I do in my personal time is none of your business."

"Ooh," Root sings scandalously, "are you two getting serious?"

"You know, I'm the only reason that you're not in a cage right now," Shaw tells her.

"And I appreciate it,” Root says. Without even looking, Shaw knows that she’s smiling down on her.

“I didn’t do it for you,” Shaw says through gritted teeth. “I’m doing it for…feminism.”

 

 

 

"How you do matters as much as what you do."

Shaw can't believe something like that came out of her mouth. It's like something on one of those inspirational posters with landscape as their backgrounds.

She used to think: as long as it gets the job done, who cares, right? But apparently she thinks differently now, just because she's been shooting at kneecaps instead of brains. She wonders if it has made her soft. Like if it comes down to a choice between one and many—and she doesn't doubt that it will happen sooner rather than later, considering the looming threat of another ASI—will she be able to make the more difficult choice?

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Shaw sniggers. "Even a million can't tempt me."

"A million pennies? That could be arranged," Root says.

"You're such a cheapskate," Shaw tells her, peeling the bandage that is peeking from behind Root's shirt. The wound doesn't look too terrible. Her hand then reaches behind Root's ear but stops before her fingers touch the bandage there. "So you literally put the Machine inside of you."

One corner of Root's mouth curls up. "Jealous?"

Shaw huffs, shaking her head. It isn't jealousy. It is the sheer stupidity of it. Root has given the Machine ownership of one of her ears. What other body parts will she give to the Machine? And will it stop before she runs out of body parts to give?

But that isn't Shaw's business anymore. So she shuts her mouth and peels the bandage. From the stitches, Shaw can tell that the person who did them was meticulous.

"Keep the dressings dry," Shaw says. "If fluids from either wound soak through the bandage, change it. Don't wait."

Root's smile widens. "I love it when you play doctor," she drawls. "You become very attentive."

Shaw pulls her hand down.

She doesn't miss how clingy Root got when she's sick. Let's just say, she once had to hand over a case she had spent months on to another team because Root went to the wrong sushi restaurant.

"Lucky for me," Shaw says, "those days are over."

"You're right," Root murmurs. "It's about time that I become the nurse."

She reaches for the wound on Shaw's arm, but like Shaw, she hesitates to touch the dressing. She just lets her fingers hover over it, and somehow, Shaw doesn't flinch away from them.

Shaw knows that she should step back—they're standing to close to each other—but her feet aren't moving.

She clears her throat. "I can take care of myself fine."

Root leans forward and whispers into Shaw's ear, "I know, but the offer still stands. Unless, you have someplace to be."

Crap. Shaw pushes Root away and checks her watch.

She's late for her date with Kelli.

 

 

 

"I'm sorry," Shaw apologizes for the tenth time.

Kelli smiles. "I might not know exactly what you do, but I know that it is important. Besides, you weren't that late."

"I was half an hour late," Shaw says. "You must have thought that I stood you up."

"But you didn't," Kelli says. "Now eat your pudding. It's going to get cold."

While picking up her fork, Shaw becomes painfully aware of the hoodie she's wearing.

"I'm sorry about the outfit too," Shaw says. "I really wanted to look nice for you."

Kelli chuckles, then leans over the table. Her fingers trace Shaw's left collarbone.

"On the contrary," Kelli says. "I think your outfit highlights," she drags her finger down and stops about half an inch above the collar of Shaw's tank top, "your most valuable assets."

Shaw bites her lip, resisting the sigh that has climbed up her throat.

With the same hand, Kelli picks up the other fork and digs into Shaw's sticky date pudding.

"Yum," she moans as she chews. "This _is_ good, but I don't think it's better than sex." She winks and takes another bite. "A close second maybe."

That was hot, and Shaw wants to jump her right there and then.

But she doesn't.

As much as Shaw wants to believe otherwise, it isn't because they're in public.

But because she had a thought that hit her like a cold rush of water;

_At least she can wink._

 

 

…

 

 

Shaw has never been to prom. She was one of those kids who had her nose stuck so deep in books that she never bothered to make friends. So not only did she have no person to take or who would take her to prom, she also didn't have friends who would tell her that there's no shame in going stag.

She never felt that she missed out on anything—there are things she's done that most people can't even dream of—but everyone has their what ifs. Even her.

Hers was a jock who was more than what he seemed. Shaw would often see him in the library whenever she surfaced from her tall stack of books.

He isn't the brightest cookie in the world, but he tries. He would pick a book, usually a 'For Dummies' book, and stare at same page for an hour or so before slamming the book shut. But he'd always come back the next day to try and comprehend a different subject.

"You're doing it wrong," she said to him one day.

He looked up, ready to snap at her, but reined in his intended insult when he saw her.

He made a shooing motion with his hand. "Go away, little girl."

She huffed. "I'm a senior."

"Really?" he asked, squinting.

She didn't tell him that she skipped a grade.

"Yeah, we have history and physics together," she told him.

"Sorry," he said, shrugging. "I thought you were a freshman."

"Well, I'm not," she replied.

"Good to know," he muttered and went back to his book.

Anyone would have taken that as a cue to go away, but Shaw didn't. She couldn't take another day of watching him bulldoze his way through another book he won't finish. Sure, slamming your way into stuff can be useful at times, but not for studying.

After a minute or so, he looked up. "Can you stop staring at me?" he said. "I can't concentrate on my book."

"Like you have for the past hour?" she asked.

"Just…" He shook his head. "Please leave."

"I'm on the honor roll," she told him.

"Good for you," he muttered.

"What I'm saying is," she said, "I'm great at learning things. Maybe I can help you learn whatever it is you're trying to learn."

He accepted her offer.

They spent at least two hours a day in the library after that. Shaw thought maybe they had become friends at some point, but he never acknowledged her outside of the library, which didn't really bother her. She wouldn't know how to act around him when there weren't any books between them anyway.

But one day, he asked, "Anyone asked you to prom yet?"

Her heart skipped a beat. For a moment, she thought that he was going to ask her.

He didn't. When she said no, he just told her, "Someone should."

But not him. The next day, he asked his girlfriend to prom in the middle of history. If Shaw was his girlfriend, she would have been pissed at him for disrupting the class, but apparently the whole school thought that it was romantic. For three whole days, she couldn't turn a corner without hearing about it. The girls swooned and the boys scratched their heads at the very high bar that he had set.

She didn't see him at the library for the next few weeks, just a quick apology on a Tuesday while she was immersed in her chemistry homework. He told her that he was busy planning for the big night and winked at her. When she looked at him with a deadpan expression, he attempted to explain but she cut him off with an 'I get it!' that got her an angry shush from the librarian.

Two days after prom, she saw him in the town library.

"You missed prom," he said.

"Not really my thing," she told him.

"Cool," he mumbled.

They sat in silence for next hour or so; she with a guide she's reading to prepare for the first aid course that she will take in the summer, and he with 'A Brief History of Time'. He had been reading the book for three months but he had not gone past further than page 20. It was the first book that he had not slammed shut in frustration despite the very slow pace that he had to take with it.

"Nope," he said, chuckling when she complimented him on his resilience as they walked home. "I've thrown this book at the wall in my bedroom more times than I can count."

"What made it different than all the other books?" she asked.

"I don't think it's the book," he said. "It's what you said."

"What did I say?" she asked, truly clueless about what he’s referring to.

"You told me that to learn something, you need to stick with it longer than a day."

"It's an obvious advice," she told him. "If it's easy to learn something, it means you already know it so you're not learning anything new, are you?"

"Yeah, but see, things have always come easy for me," he said. "Football, girls, and…" He stopped, unable to think of anything else that he might be good at.

"Those aren't going to help you sustain a living, you know," she said.

He laughed. "Exactly. But before you, no one's ever pointed it out to me. Everyone made it seem like football and girls are the only things that matter in life."

"If you really bought into that, it makes you kind of a dumb ass," she told him. "There are other people in this world who aren't football players."

"Just kind of?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes. "Clearly, you've seen the error of your ways," she said. "So maybe you're a little smarter than a complete dumb ass."

Another laugh rumbled its way through his throat.

"That's what I like about you," he said. "You say what you mean."

She cleared her throat. "It's less of a blessing than you think."

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

Ever since she can remember, Shaw had known that there was something not quite right with her, but she had never felt compelled to admit to anyone that she is painfully aware of her oddities.

But when her what-if asked that question, the words just rushed out of her mouth.

"You know why."

"Actually, I don't," he said.

She heaved a breath. "Do you really want me to say it?"

"Only if _you want_ to."

"Fine," she exhaled. "When you say something that hurts someone, you feel some amount of guilt, right?"

He nodded.

"Well, I don't, and it's not just guilt. I don't feel things the way other people do. That's what makes me a blunt person," she said and stopped walking. She wanted to give him a chance to run.

He didn't. He just stopped next to her, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"I don't know if I am capable of loving anyone," he said.

He was probably a teenage boy experiencing some kind of an existential angst at the time, but for the sixteen year old Sameen, it sounded a lot like acceptance. That she wasn't as weird as she had believed herself to be because look at this guy who has the admiration of the student body, and yet he identified with _her_ , the weird girl who did everything by herself.

It made her feel…less alone.

Matthew Reed reminds her of that boy. Maybe that's why she keeps smiling like an idiot whenever he is within her vicinity. Even John has noticed her acting like a silly schoolgirl with a crush.

"What about Kelli?" John asks.

"We're keeping things casual," Shaw tells him.

They are. Kelli has been seeing another parent of a student at Kai's school. They're both in this single parent support group that the school promotes in an effort to be more supportive to single parents.

Kelli seems to really like her new friend. They went for a coffee date on the day they met, which is great progress considering how long it took her and Shaw to move from phone buddies to actual face-to-face dates. Of course, it helps that during the coffee date, their children were sat at another table devouring their respective desserts.

"How about your ex?" John says.

"What about her?" Shaw replies.

"Won't she get jealous?"

"She can get jealous all she wants," Shaw says. "It doesn't affect my dating life."

"If you say so," John mutters.

"What the hell does that mean?" Shaw snaps.

"Nothing," John says and walks away to say hi to Toke.

At the same time, Reed sees her alone and decides to fill the void that John had just left.

"Is there something going on between you and Frank?" Reed asks.

"God, no," Shaw tells him.

"Because you two don't seem to want to leave each other's side," Reed says.

"Nope." Shaw shakes her head. "Never."

"Good," Reed says. "The guy is a sleaze."

"I heard," Shaw says without thinking. "I mean," she adds quickly, "can you believe all the gossips that went around the school about him?"

"Well, I can believe it because I have seen it, like most people here," Reed says, "but you shouldn't believe everything you hear."

"Not when it comes from a reliable source," Root's voice crackles in Shaw's ear.

"Something you want to tell me?" Shaw asks.

Reed doesn't seem ready to spill out any of his dark secrets, but it's an appropriate question considering the flow of the conversation. It was more of a question for Root. Still, if he does answer, it will make her job a hell of a lot easier.

"Just speaking from experience," Reed says.

"I don't have anything to confess," Root sings with a suspiciously scandalous tone. "But I heard that you might."

That damn Machine. Shaw thought that a computer, especially an intelligent computer, would be impervious to the desire to gossip.

"That's not what I meant," Shaw blurts out.

Reed's forehead crinkles.

"No, I don't," Shaw quickly adds, shaking her head. "I'm not prying, I swear."

Reed sniggers. "Oh, you want to know. _Everyone_ wants to know. Who wouldn't?"

"Seriously," Shaw says. "You don't have to tell me anything."

With a wistful look, Reed says, "Wouldn't have anything to tell even if I want to."

"Oh, you mean something about prince charming that might clue you in on whether he is the victim or perpetrator?" Root asks, feigning innocence. "Sorry sweetie, I have my own task to execute. But if you ask me, he is definitely the perpetrator."

Shaw almost digs her earpiece out to crush it with her bare hand, but the line goes dead before her fingers reach her ear.

Reed seems to have shaken himself out of whatever tragic past he was recalling, and Shaw schools her expression into one that reflects composure.

Like she did so many years ago to a boy who was so clearly misunderstood by his peers, she says,

"I believe you."

 

 

 

Based on her personal experiences, flying bullets can be a hell of an aphrodisiac. This is proven true once again as Reed hastily removes his own pants.

"I have a girlfriend," Shaw tells him. "But she's also dating someone else."

She pushes him onto the bed, stepping on his pants to help with its removal.

"But I want to be clear," Shaw says. "It doesn't mean we are."

"Dating?" Reed asks, grabbing her hips.

She nods.

"Fine with me," he says.

"Glad we're on the same page."

 

 

…

 

 

Fucking and dating can happen concurrently with the same person, but neither of the two is necessarily dependent on the other. This concept is easier to grasp if one accepts that no one person can provide you with everything you can't already provide for yourself.

Shaw doesn't get her favourite ribeye from the same restaurant that serves the best tomato and cheese pizza in the world. Those two places just have different types of specialties. She can't fault them for not getting distracted doing other stuff while perfecting their best dish.

"That makes sense," John says. Then he squints. Kind of. It's a little hard to tell with his naturally squinty eyes.

"Great," Shaw says, "because I am done talking about this."

They both go back to cleaning their respective guns. But just as Shaw is about to finish reassembling her gun, John asks, "Does it always have to be casual?"

Shaw sighs. "It doesn't have to be. There are people who cohabitate with their wife and their wife's wife's wife. Like I said, it depends on the person. Sometimes, you're in a relationship but you want a casual side thing with someone else. Or you can get serious with both people, or neither. It's fine as long as everyone knows about everyone."

"So with Kelli and prom king, do you think that one day you might want to upgrade your relationship with either of them?" John asks.

Shaw snorts. "The point of casual is that you don't have to think that far."

"But don't you want to?"

"I'm an ex-government assassin turned vigilante. Casual is my only option," Shaw answers. "What's got you so interested anyway? Are you thinking of starting a harem?"

"No," John says with a completely straight face.

Shaw is a little disappointed. She was hoping that the mention of 'harem' would fluster him. He doesn't seem like a guy who could handle more than one romantic partner in his life. Maybe he'd pine over more than one person at a time, but once he commits to someone, he'd probably cease his other romantically inclined relationships.

"Then what's with the twenty questions?" Shaw asks.

John exhales. "I just think that when someone is important to you, they should know."

"Don't worry," Shaw tells him. "Kelli and Reed know how much they mean to me."

She's always direct with them. She isn't interested in games. Not after her disastrous marriage.

"I'm not talking about them," John mutters into the forcing cone of his revolver. It was barely audible, but Shaw heard every word.

Carter must be on his mind again, so she lets it go. She knows how grieving could make you idealize a person into someone who is way more perfect than they were when alive (but if someone deserves to be put on a pedestal, it's Carter), which makes you more likely to project a kind of misplaced nostalgia on another person who you view as the luckier person with all the opportunities that you've lost.

"I need a drink," Shaw announces. "Harold has a twenty year old whiskey I've been dying to try. You want some?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea," John hesitates.

"Don't worry. It's already been opened," Shaw assures him.

John raises an eyebrow at her.

"By Harold," Shaw says.

He squints at her.

"Fine," she huffs. "I'll get you the cheap whiskey. But I'm still having the good stuff."

 

 

 

"We're gonna steal a jet."

For some reason, Shaw had looked at John. Like she's asking for permission. Well, no, it's more like she's asking him if it's a good idea to hop on the back of a motorbike that her ex is driving.

He's the only person she knows who would think it's okay.

But then she doesn't know that many people anyway. If she had the time to make new friends, there might be more than one person who agrees with John’s view.  

So she hopped on the bike.

She didn't know that it would turn into something like a date. Nor did she realize that it could be one until they are sitting at a hotel bar, sipping fruity cocktails, and she finds herself asking Root,

"What kind of work?"

And she said it like (and maybe she is) she is interested in the answer.

As long she's known Root (even when she was Caroline), Shaw has never seen her take a sip of anything with alcohol in it. Sure, she's ordered or requested alcoholic beverages before, but she never drinks them. Shaw once thought that it was a social thing—a way to make people around her feel at ease—but after finding out who she really is, Shaw figured that she didn't drink because she needed to keep her head straight, what with all those people she's played floating in her head.

But before answering Shaw, she takes a sip of her cocktail.

"My job description is a little varied."

Root swallows nothing this time, her hand swirling the little umbrella which she had specifically requested from the barkeep; "Two somethings with those cute little umbrellas in them, please.”

Is she…nervous?

No, not nervous. She has that sly smile on her face, the one she wears when she's about to say something stupidly lame.

"Don't do it," Shaw tells her. "Don't ruin the moment."

"Are we…having a moment?" Root asks.

"I'm saying," Shaw exhales, "stealing that jet was fun– fine. I'm having a fine time. Let's just keep it that way."

"Fine is good," Root replies.

Shaw wants to protest but the number just said hi to a known arms dealer.

"It's show time," Root sings.

Shaw rolls her eyes. "You're the lamest person in the world, you know that right?"

"Keep the compliments coming, sweetie," Root says as they casually walk over to what is likely a negotiation about some missing uranium from a research reactor in Sydney. "It so fuels—" Root slams the butt of her gun on the arms dealer's head without warning. "…the fight in me."

Shaw freezes. An arms dealer rarely travels alone.

"Duck under that table," Root tells her, then shoots at a bodyguard who is scrambling for his gun.

Shaw shoots at another one who has his gun pointed at Root's back. As the man goes down, she pulls on Root's arm and presses on Root's shoulders so her long…everything could hide behind the very small round table that can't possibly hide them both unless…

"This is cozy," Root drawls, referring to Shaw's whole body that is stretching way beyond its limits to make sure that they form a small enough ball that could fit behind the table.

"You could have at least given me a heads up," Shaw mutters, shooting at the four remaining goons.

"I told you to duck," Root replies without a single bit of remorse in her tone. "Besides, I saw your eyes when we walked into this bar. You already knew who will be shooting at us, don't you?"

"Not the point," Shaw grumbles. Finally, the goons are taking cover. "I'm backing up to the wall. Please hold on to the table, will you?"

She'll leave a review on TripAdvisor for this place when this is over. They really have solid tables.

When her back hits the wall, she tells Root, "Now, when I say go, I'll take the two on the left and you take the two on the right."

"Gladly."

 

 

 

Shaw rented a car.

She only got the call telling her to go to Harold and John in DC as she was exiting baggage claim in LaGuardia. Of course then, there was no flight available to DC until the very next day.

So she had no choice but to drive to DC. If she drives really fast, she might cut an hour of journey time.

Still, that's quite a long time to spend alone in a car. A long time to accidentally contemplate on things you would rather not think about.

Like how your skin still feels hot from your ex-wife's touch.

And how hard it is to ignore her smell that is stuck on your shirt that you could have changed out of if only you had the time.

And how, no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to divert your brain away from these stupid sensory reminders of a person you supposedly dislike.

But that's not the worst part. Sometimes, it is just inevitable that some people get stuck in your brain. It doesn't make them special. It just means that they have some features, whether in their physical appearance or behaviour, that make them stand out among the hundreds of people you meet in your lifetime because of some inclination that is scrawled into your DNA. An inclination that hints at the things you might need in your life.

A lot of people need a lot of things. Necessity isn't a bad thing. Being needy isn't a bad thing. It's when you force someone into providing you with something they can't give you— _that_ is when needing becomes bad.

"I had a great time too," Root's words echo in Shaw's head. "Would love," Root had to take a quick breath before continuing, "to do this again." While her face didn't show much of a change during that little pause, her brief slip in confidence level did not go unnoticed by Shaw.

And that's the worst part. Despite having deceived Shaw for a long time, Root is not shy about displaying her need for Shaw. Yet, never once did she look at Shaw with eyes filled with expectations that Shaw cannot possibly meet.

When Root was Caroline, Shaw had gotten used to seeing those expectations in her eyes. But she was playing a role then. Now, Shaw isn't sure what exactly is her game. Maybe she's appealing to that long forgotten craving for acceptance that Shaw hadn't thought about since she was a teenager.

Shaw slams her foot on the brake and swerves to the right. She honks at the idiot who is driving fifty in the left lane.

Harold once said that Root's hacking mastery isn't only applicable to machines, but humans too. Maybe Root is hacking her.

And maybe it's working.


	5. Difficult Goodbyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaw's head immediately goes to the worst place it could go to. 
> 
> "Are you about to kamikaze into some fortress of doom?" she asks, forgetting the boundaries that she's supposed to enforce between them. "Because Root, no god is worth dying for."
> 
> Root's chuckle is dry. "How about a friend?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thank you to chibitortuga who provided me with the ego boost to post this chapter.

Oh, thank god someone is shooting at John and Harold…and some chubby guy who looks a little like a well-dressed Fusco. She needs a little time off from thinking about Root.

She flashes a smile at them.

"Need a ride?"

 

 

 

If it is up to her, Congressman Asshole would be lying in a pool of his own blood right now. But it's not, is it?

Harold runs the operation. She and John are just his henchmen. Well, John might be a little more than a henchman. But in any case, he pays each of them a salary. In the real world, that means he is their employer.

Which means he calls the shots.

But she can at least reason with him. Good bosses take suggestions from their employees.

Her suggestion is met with a question.

"Where is the line?" Harold asks.

She wants to tell him that she thinks it's pretty close to the line where a lot of people are going to die, but that exasperated look that he's giving her already tells her that he doesn't think that those two lines can intersect, which is not not wrong because even parallel lines intersect. It's totally a thing. All lines eventually reach infinity and if you think of infinity as a point, any set of parallel lines would eventually meet each other at such a point.

It isn't as unthinkable as you might think it is. What she finds unthinkable is Kelli being played like a chess piece just as she is starting to feel like she has regained control of her own life. Or Gen getting lost again in a system that doesn't care about her, that could at any time snuff her out if they think she is too inconvenient. And what if Reed looks into a case too hard and finds an evil AI that cares little about how good he is as a prosecutor and cares a lot more about eliminating any obstacles that stand in its way?

And Root…

She isn't worried about Root—that woman is like a cockroach, nearly impossible to get rid of—but when this predicted war between The Machine and this new AI comes, she will be at the front and center of it. Even cockroaches can't survive getting stomped on by giants.

Shaw keeps these thoughts to herself, choosing not to argue with Harold. After all, she is new to this whole morality thing.

 

 

 

The decision comes easy.

Harold and John aren't arguing about whether they should kill McCourt. Instead, they are arguing about whether they should take McCourt with them—maybe have another go at reasoning with him before they let him off for good.

Shaw already knows who will win the argument, or rather who will forfeit; John always agrees with Harold eventually. Still, Shaw had hoped that he would back her up and talk some sense into Harold.

She has stopped hoping a minute ago. The boys clearly need to get their priorities straight.

She releases the magazine in her gun. It's still full from when she reloaded it after her, uh, mission with Root.

One is all she needs.

 

 

 

She's not saying what she did was right. She won't even try to justify it.

It just felt necessary, and considering the squeamish way that Harold had reacted to her suggestion, her so called employer won't have the stomach for it. And her coworker, who might just have the stomach for it, won't do it without an okay from their boss.

So really, the natural choice was her. Besides, she was the one between the three of them who would be the least inclined to regret it when the deed was done. And if she did turn out to regret it (which she does a little because what she did made her feel like an automaton who is too trusting of a computer program, no matter how reliable and intelligent it is), she will be better equipped at coping with the guilt.

Harold can't look at her. But even in the dark, she saw how the ice in his eyes melted a little when a bullet pierced through her thigh. He offered a shoulder and an arm, but John told him that he just needed to look out for himself because John was more than capable of dragging her away from the SWAT team that was after them while fending off the raining bullets with the handgun in his other hand.

It was an obvious lie, but Harold bought it. Maybe his ire at her made it easier for him to believe it. Or maybe he was too distracted by the responsibility over _her_ action that he had somehow decided to shoulder without consulting her.

In any case, they made it out of the woods in three whole pieces, and managed to sneak into the city without being caught by two separate law enforcement agencies and one very resourceful private corporation.

"Sameen…" Root's voice echoes in her ear, panicked and breathless. "Is Harold with you? I can't get in touch with him."

"He's—" Shaw tugs on John's arm to stop him from moving. She turns her head to find Harold as John does the same.

Harold is gone.

"Why?" Shaw asks, and John tenses up.

"We have a problem."

 

 

 

A problem is an understatement. What they have is a disaster—a motherfucking catastrophe.

Pictures of Shaw and Harold are pasted all over every news outlet. So far, it's only local, but if this doesn't get taken care of soon, the whole country will know their faces.

It isn't the first time that they have ended up on the news, but there has never been a clear profile of either of them. It's always a shadowy outline that is less than recognizable by even those who knew them personally. This time, however, the pictures are of a high enough resolution to be blown up and put on that giant screen on Times Square.

Honestly, Shaw is surprised that that hasn't happened yet.

Harold is in the wind and probably too caught up in his angst to stop pictures of him and Shaw from spreading around the country. There is even a tip line reserved solely for anyone who wants to provide any information on them. Fusco said it has been ringing off the hook. A lot of them are from people who are claiming Shaw's and Harold's innocence, but there are also a lot of others who are calling them creepy stalkers who deserve to be locked up.

Both are fair statements which luckily are useless to the police since they make it sound like Shaw and Harold are some kind of modern vigilantes who look out for the city using highly questionable methods that sound way too science fiction-y to be true.

But the thing that Shaw can't stand the most is how it has forced her to stay cooped up in her loft.

Both Kelli and Reed have called numerous times. So far, neither of them has reported her to the police, which made it tempting to think that it might be safe to answer, just to tell them that she is okay.

"I can help you terminate that line, if you'd like."

Oh yeah, and Root visits. A lot. Which doesn't annoy Shaw as much as she thought it would.

"I know how to destroy my own phone, thank you," Shaw says.

"I was thinking more along the lines of deactivating the number that you have so kindly provided to your lovers," Root replies, "but that works too."

She's still pretty annoying though.

"Or," Root adds. "I could redirect their phone calls to, say, China and bunch of other phones around the world, and then back to you. That way, if they have contacted the authorities, your phone won't be traced back to here."

"They're gonna end up with huge phone bills at the end of the month," Shaw says.

"If they truly care about you, they won't mind," Root says, bouncing her eyebrows.

"That's not what I'm worried about," Shaw tells her.

"Then what _are_ you worried about?" Root asks.

"I already told you," Shaw mutters. "The huge phone bills."

"Well, if that is really bothering you," Root says, "I can take care of the bills."

 

 

 

Root hasn't shown up again after she helped Shaw answer Kelli's and Reed's phone calls, and send Gen a Morse code message (which wasn't really necessary but Shaw thought it will make the girl happy).

While a break from the awful flirting is a welcome relief, it has made Shaw's confinement a little…quiet.

John visits too, and when he can't, he sends Fusco.

Not that she doesn't appreciate their visits, but the kind of noise they bring just isn't the same as the kind of noise that Root brings- brought. Sure, they're less annoying—even Fusco, who somehow always manages to pick the worst takeout food available, can't beat Root's cringe inducing pick up line which involved pi and the Golden ratio—but Root, well, she's—

It's hard to describe it.

It's like the quiet is this hole shaped like her; like she's the only one who can fill it perfectly while the others fit only parts of it, and because she's so used to seeing Root fit into the hole so snugly, it's become too damn noticeable to ignore when someone awkwardly tries to stuff themselves into it.

John and Fusco don't exactly try to; they just bring themselves, unaware of this Root-shaped hole.

"You're missing them, huh?" Fusco asks.

Shaw groans internally. Crap, that's what it is. If she was someone more poetic (or someone who has any more denial left in her), she'd go on with the whole hole metaphor, but she hates beating around the bush.

"Yeah, I miss—" she stops herself, noticing that Fusco didn't say 'she', but 'them'. "Who?"

"Your," Fusco squirms, "your, uh, polygamy partners."

"Sure," Shaw mutters, deciding against correcting him. Maybe later, when she's in a more educating mood. "Them. I miss them."

Which she does. Just not as much as she misses Root, apparently, since she's not comparing their absence to a hole in her existence.

"I don't know how you do it," Fusco says. "I can't even handle one woman in my life."

"I manage," Shaw says.

She wants to be cautious.

She _is_ , and she _should_ because Root hacks people like she hacks machines, right? But there's that worry niggling in the back of Shaw's head which keeps repeating to her that the last time they saw each other was the _last_ time they would see each other, ever.

"And it helps that I never think about _handling_ them," Shaw says, and stands up.

"Where are you going?" Fusco asks, following her to the door.

"A walk," she tells him.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he says, grabbing her shoulder as she grabs the door knob.

"If you don't want to lose any of your fingers," Shaw warns, "you better get your hands off me."

"Okay, whoa," Fusco exclaims, pulling his hand off her shoulder. "Fine, I won't stop you, but I'm gonna have to call the tall guy on you."

Shaw yanks the door open. "Then _he_ 'll lose his fingers."

But her mad rush out of the loft is stopped by a tired slender body, leaning against the doorframe.

"I sure hope that only applies to the boys because I just got my nails done today."

 

 

…

 

 

Shaw wanted to yell at Root, ask her where she was and what important thing she had to do that she couldn't have sent a text, or a postcard, saying that she's okay. Then Shaw remembered, that it wasn't her place anymore. Root can go wherever and do whatever she wanted without consulting Shaw.

Also, Root was too exhausted to keep herself vertical when she showed up at Shaw's door. As soon as she entered the loft, she went straight for the couch and fell asleep in a matter of seconds.

Fusco left an hour later, when it became clear that Shaw had no intention of leaving her home.

"I gotta pick up my kid," he told Shaw. "You okay with cocoa puffs here?"

Shaw had nodded even though she had wanted a third person in the loft who could deter her from doing something stupid, but she didn't really know how to explain that to Fusco since she's not sure herself what exactly that stupid thing was.

She just has a strong feeling that she's about to do it, whatever it is.

A sigh comes from the couch, and Shaw's body stiffens. She subtly cranes her neck to check if Root has woken up.

Root's eyes are still closed. She mumbles something incoherent and rolls over to her side so her body faces the back of the couch.

One corner of Shaw's lips lifts up involuntarily. A convenient excuse would be that she was unconsciously flexing her mouth, but she knows better. It was a smile.

She thought that it was cute, that whole lip flapping thing that Root was doing in her sleep.

See?

She's fucked.

She is resting her chin on the back of the chair she's sitting on to watch Root curled up on her couch, and it's not really a sight to behold. Root has very long limbs and they don't quite fit into Shaw's two seater.

Despite that, Root seems to be sleeping soundly. Shaw tried to wake her up a few times, no actual touching—she's afraid that touching would lead to something else—just loud sounds that would have woken up most people, but Root only stirs to readjust her position, showing no signs of being conscious of her movements.

She must be really tired.

Root isn't necessarily a light sleeper, but bed time for her is a production. The sheets must be above a certain thread count, the mattress needs to be approved by chiropractors, and she can't sleep with less than two pillows.

That wasn't just Caroline. When they were stuck in that CIA safehouse, Root had slipped into her PJs before lying down to sleep. Comfort was still a priority for her even in the middle of a mission.

But here, she's snoring away in dreamland.

If a group of chiropractors were to inspect Shaw's couch, they'd probably tell her to destroy it. She bought it at the as-is section at Ikea. It was dumped there because any weight put on it will sink right into the bottom of the cushion. Shaw did what she can to fix it, but it's still pretty terrible.

Which just shows how badly Root needs the nap.

Shaw gets up from the chair. That's enough staring. It's going be dinner time soon, and Root brought all the ingredients for Shaw's famous mac and cheese, even the panko bread crumbs that she claims to be no different than normal bread crumbs.

 

 

 

"Something smells yummy."

"Don't sound so surprised," Shaw says. "You bought the ingredients."

"I know," Root replies. "But it doesn't negate the fact that it smells great."

Shaw moves towards the cabinet where she is supposed to put her plates, well, plate.

She stops at the sink where her sole plate is sitting on the drying rack. "Is there any chance that you brought paper plates that I haven't seen yet?"

Root tilts her head sideways. "You have a cast-iron griddle, but you don't have more than one plate in your home?"

"I cook steak more often than I have guests," Shaw says in a matter of fact tone. "But I have a bowl somewhere so you could use that."

"You mean the huge mixing bowl in your fridge?" Root asks as she opens said fridge.

"Sure," Shaw says. "Wait no, don't use that. That's not batter in there. It's…just don't touch it."

Root chuckles, shaking her head. Then she walks over towards Shaw. Slipping into the narrow gap between Shaw and the kitchen counter, she reaches forward for the utensils drawer. Somehow, she manages to keep any parts of her body from touching Shaw's.

From the drawer, she retrieves a stainless steel fork and a plastic spork. She holds them up with her body still almost pressed up against Shaw.

"We can eat out of the pan," Root says. "If you're not afraid of getting infected by my cooties, that is."

Shaw snatches the spork out of Root's hand before shoving Root out of her way.

As she pretends to check on the oven, she tells Root, "I'll make a line in the macaroni."

 

 

 

Sometime during the meal, the line gets decimated, surprisingly, not by Root but Shaw. There is actually a very good reason for that. Shaw had gobbled through her half of the mac and cheese while Root had barely eaten half of hers because she kept ignoring her food in favour of gazing idly at Shaw.

Naturally, Shaw thought a lesson needs to be taught. So she scoops up a huge chunk of Root's part of the mac and cheese.

Instead of protesting like Caroline would have done, Root drops her fork into the pan.

"Are you done?" Shaw asks.

There is no way that Root as Caroline faked her love for Shaw's mac and cheese. Shaw would easily admit to being fooled by Caroline about a lot of things, but not that. Shaw doesn't know a lot about love, but she knows how it looks on a person when the love is directed at food.

And she knows beyond doubt that Root loves her mac and cheese.

"I'm not really hungry," Root answers.

"Right," Shaw mutters, incredulous. "Tired people are always hungry, and you were really tired when you showed up."

"What can I say?" Root tells her. "Your couch is a miracle worker when it comes to energy recovery."

"Whatever is the opposite of ergonomic is that couch," Shaw retorts. "But sure, if you want to die of malnutrition and/or exhaustion, then more for me."

She bites into the chunk of mac and cheese that she quite frankly is too full for.

"Didn't know you cared," Root murmurs.

"I—" Shaw reins in the sharp retort at the tip of her tongue when she notices Root's changed expression, no longer her creepy smile-y self and instead, she has an unmistakeable gloom shading her features.

Shaw's head immediately goes to the worst place it could go to.

"Are you about to kamikaze into some fortress of doom?" she asks, forgetting the boundaries that she's supposed to enforce between them. "Because Root, no god is worth dying for."

Root's chuckle is dry. "How about a friend?"

 

 

 

With a finger, Shaw lifts the tip of her cap and smiles at the old lady who has been staring at her. It's a bold move considering that she's wanted for the murder of a congressman, but she doubts that the woman can make her facial features from that distance.

Shaw glances at the bench where Kelli has just sat herself to watch Kai playing with her friends. The old lady needs someone to tell her that she should see a doctor for her glaucoma, but Shaw needs to say her goodbye to Kelli first.

She dials the number of the burner phone that she had placed under the bench earlier. As much as she wants to trust Kelli, her training and experience tell her that she shouldn't, at least not completely.

From afar, Shaw witnesses Kelli's shoulders tense. Her eyes quickly find Kai and they follow the little girl even as her hand reaches underneath the bench.

Shaw's heart wrenches. She hates that she's causing unnecesary anxiety for Kelli, but this is the safest way to say goodbye.

She can't just disappear without a word.

"Hey," Shaw greets gently. "Don't worry. It's just me."

"Where are you?" Kelli asks.

"Around," Shaw replies.

Kelli's eyes are still trained on her daughter. She has risen from the bench, readying herself to sprint towards Kai and snatch the little girl up if need be. Considering the method that Shaw's chosen to make contact with her, her paranoia is understandable.

"I'm not going to hurt Kai," Shaw promises despite knowing that Kelli might not take her word for it.

"Then what are you doing?" Kelli asks.

"You have someone to protect. I get that," Shaw says. "It's okay if you want to believe what the rest of the world believe. That might be safer actually."

"Sameen…" Kelli straightens her body. "What is going on?"

"My trouble with the law has escalated beyond my control," Shaw says. "I'm leaving."

"But when you called last time, you said you were fine."

Kelli sits back down, and Shaw is a little touched that the news of her farewell is a little too heavy for Kelli to take standing up.

"I was," Shaw answers.

"But not anymore?" Kelli asks.

"At least not in the city."

"How far away from the city are you going?"

"I can't tell you," Shaw says, feeling some amount of guilt for the answer she wants to give but ultimately can't.

"Will you be safe?"

"I'll try," is the only promise Shaw can make.

"I will miss you," Kelli confesses.

"Me too."

The next day, Shaw has a similar conversation with Reed, but at a crowded museum instead of a park. Saying goodbye to him is easier than with Kelli since she's insisted that their relationship is one with minimal emotions involved.

But it doesn't stop him from worrying about her.

"It's the prosecutor in me," Reed says, admitting that she's not exactly on his most trusted list due to her most wanted status. "Can't turn it off."

As she did with Kelli, Shaw tells him that it's okay—she understands. She too would react the same way. In fact, she _has_ reacted the same way. The only difference between her and them is that she doesn't hand out the benefit of her doubt as easily as them.

But seeing them trust her, completely or no, despite the many reasons telling them that they shouldn't at all—despite _her_ telling them that they shouldn't—made her think that maybe, it's finally time for her to let go of the distrust that she has for a certain someone.

 

 

 

"Finished all your goodbyes?" Root asks.

"There's one more," Shaw tells her.

"Who?"

"Gen," Shaw answers. "The kid with the unhealthy obsession for spies. I think I told you about her."

"You did," Root affirms. "Interesting kid. Kind of reminds me of myself when I was younger."

"I bet." Shaw can see it, a young Root setting up homemade bugs all over Bishop, but she probably did it more for blackmailing purposes than information collecting.

"Including the run-in with a drug boss," Root adds.

"I thought you got away with framing Trent," Shaw says.

"Oh, that was another drug boss," Root says.

Shaw gives her a glance that is part baffled and part intrigued.

"And I thought _I_ had a tumultuous childhood."

"You have no idea," Root mutters. "But the girl is lucky to have found someone like you."

"How so?" Shaw asks.

"Normal is overrated, sure," Root begins her answer. "But the thing about normal is, you get to have adults who tell you that you will never be alone. That you can always find someone like you no matter what. But when you're the weird kid, there aren't a lot of adults who can make you feel that way." She pauses to swallow air. "So you grow up thinking that you're the only one like you—you grow up thinking that you will _always_ be alone."

They say forgiveness will set you free, and this, Shaw thinks, is an opportunity for her to gain freedom from her anger and resentment towards Root.

"Well, sometimes," Shaw says, "kids who have to deal with shitty adults who make them feel alone grow up to find other weird kids. Those other weird kids might not be exactly like them, but I think the shared experience of growing up lonely can create this sort of connection between them that could make up for all those years living in isolation."

Root's eyebrows crook.

Shaw presses her lips together, avoiding Root's reading gaze.

"So," Root murmurs, a smile playing at her lips, "this weird kids club, is it open for registration?"

Shaw lets out a sigh. She didn't know what she expected. "Only if the person interested won't be a dick about it."

 

 

 

Root hands a card to Gen.

"The weird kids club?" Gen reads the card. She looks up to glare at Root. "You don't even know me."

Root shows her own membership card in a special holder that is clipped to the inside of her jacket. "Sameen has one too." She nudges Shaw's arm. "Come on, show her."

Shaw rolls her eyes, but she fishes it out of the front pocket of her hoodie.

"It's not a real club," Shaw says. "But that magnetic strip is real."

Gen's eyes widen in delight. "What does it do?"

"I think you're smart enough to figure it out," Shaw tells her.

"Duh," Gen says, her eyes sparkling as she examines the strip. "But come on, I need something to start."

"You know, sometimes, the answer doesn't just come at you," Shaw points out.

"I'm not asking for an answer," her little friend whines. "Just a little clue. I mean, don't you get a dossier when you go on a mission?"

Root chuckles. "Our youngest member is right, Sameen. You are not a very good team leader if you don't provide your agents with the maximal amount of information."

"Fine," Shaw exhales, sounding much grumpier than she actually feels. "But you need to do your own homework first. Figure out how magnetic strips work, how you might bypass the encryption on them, and why the hell do we still use them despite the invention called chip cards?"

Gen quirks an eyebrow at her. "Do you even know the answers to your own questions?"

Shaw points her thumb at Root. "That's why I have a certified nerd wherever I go," Shaw says. "But you don't have one, so you have figure it out on your own."

"Ugh, you are worse than my teachers," Gen says. "Do you know how much work they give to kids these days?"

Shaw shrugs.

"On top of that, you have to participate in a bunch of extra-curricular activities because, " Gen makes air quotes with her fingers, "it will be good for my college application. I'm ten!"

"Work smart, not hard," Root tells her.

"That's…" Shaw says, sending Root an incredulous glance, "not bad advice."

"Exactly," Root says. "All those things they teach you at school don't matter. You have to learn the things that matter on your own."

"But what about my grades?" Gen asks.

"Oh, that's easy," Root says. "All you have to do to change your—"

Shaw quickly covers Root's mouth, muffling what she suspects to be a how-to guide for hacking into the computer system at Gen's school.

"On second thought," Shaw says to Gen, "hard work is the key to success."

 

 

 

"You know, she _will_ figure it out," Root remarks after they have dropped Gen off at her dorm.

"Yeah, but I would rather not give her all the tools now," Shaw responds. "Besides, I'm not the best person to teach her about ethics. Let her take her time figuring it out, and hopefully, at some point, someone principled will show up to guide her."

"I'm not talking about teaching her how to cheat," Root says.

"Oh, that," Shaw mutters. "Let her take her time with that too. It won't be good for her if she finds out too soon."

 

 

…

 

 

Shaw has died before. She knows what to expect, and what not to.

For example, you shouldn't expect for a white light to appear before you. Not that she doesn't believe in the people who have witnessed this scintillating white light, but that is _their_ experience.

Here's what you should expect instead: your death will be deeply personal to you. That's why a lot of people see their life flash before their eyes when they're at death's door, _but_ those crucial moments in your life won't necessarily roll on your eyeballs like a long strip of film. Sure, aesthetically, that might be a nice effect for a montage, but your memories are less a movie and more of a collection of raw footage. No one edits that shit to make it presentable to you on your death bed.

This brings Shaw to her third point: Manage Your Expectation.

Having the career trajectory that she had, she's come to know some people like her who has died more than once. What she has observed is that the amount of change that you will experience after rising from death is directly proportional to how much meaning you put into death. In fact, this change goes both ways; if you put too much meaning into death and somehow survive it, you have the same chances of turning into a bitter asswipe who consumes misery for breakfast, dinner, and lunch as you do of turning into a saint. Even if you don't find both to be intolerable options, would you really rather risk one for the other?

If you would, then good for you.

Otherwise, you should treat death like any other stage of life. Unavoidable, and there is a high chance that it would suck, but eventually, you will be past it. Look at it as an end instead of _the_ end.

Unfortunately, the countless hours of sleepless nights that Shaw has spent ruminating on this have gone to waste. At present, she is having difficulty following her own advice.

A lack of oxygen can do that to you.

And possibly, the tears wetting her cheeks that aren't hers.

She lifts her hand to wipe the tears pouring out of Root's eyes. "You're being ridiculous," she tries to say but only choking sounds come out as her arm fails her, dropping on the ground before her shaking hand could reach Root's face.

John is standing over them. Shaw can't see much of his face. With his head bowed down, the light from the bright sun behind it can't reach his face.

"G-go," Shaw manages to spit out.

John places a hand on Shaw's shoulder. "She's right," he says. "We have to go before—"

The deafening sirens of several police cars and an ambulance make his point.

Root pushes away John's well-meaning touch and crouches down to whisper into Shaw's ear.

"Let's never do this again."

"Root…" John says, his tone somehow both gentle and urgent.

Root places a kiss on Shaw's forehead.

"Let's go," John says, grabbing Root's shoulder again.

This time, Root lets him pull her up.

Someone blocks them, telling them that they shouldn't leave, but John shoves them away.

The rational part of Shaw's brain that is insisting that this death isn't going to stick is getting quieter. A reel of her life starts to play, and she can't help but notice that Root is featured prominently in it.

A brutal blow to her chest cuts the movie short. It's not a paramedic. It's some random doctor who just happened to pass by.

Shaw is relieved when her eyes refocused to Root's recognizable back. _She's still here_ , a quiet voice says.

Root looks back, her head almost hidden between the crowd that has formed around Shaw, and Shaw smiles. All the resentment and anger that she had for Root seems to have evaporated. The reel starts to spin again, displaying their happier moments together, mostly as Caroline and Sameen Shaw.

And that thing that happened after Root told her of The Machine's plan.

If this is how she goes, she doesn't mind it at all.

 

 

 

Nope, she changed her mind.

Death sucks. There is nothing that can make it a good experience, not when it's made her mother forget to eat.

Root attends her funeral, as Caroline, following her mother around as she greets the people who have come to pay their respects. They are mostly her mother's friends, while the others are people Shaw knew when she was younger, none of whom she's spoken to in the last ten years.

There's catering, and every time a tray of food passes by her mother and Root, Root will take a couple of whatever is on it and offers it to her mother. Her mother doesn't refuse, but she'll take a small bite and set it down on a table close by.

Some people are whispering about how unperturbed her mother seems— _Sameen is her only child after all, her only family_ —but the people who know her well enough know that she's just trying to distract herself with pointless chatter. Her daughter is a criminal who died trying to run away from the debt she owed to society. What more is there to say? So she goes from person to person to tell them how glad she is that they are with her during this difficult time and let them ask her if she knew, if she saw the 'signs'.

She shrugs at them and tells them, "We can only try to raise our children the best way we can." Then she asks them about their children who don't call because she knows that it will send them into a tailspin of excuses, trying to justify the absence of their children from their lives.

Yasmeen Shaw is an expert at making excuses about her daughter, and so she knows what exactly would push people's buttons about their children. Having a daughter like her Sameen got her accepting early on that no child can be perfect, even if they got all the good grades and got into the very best schools and make much more than people their age could even dream of.

It almost makes Root's stalking of her unnecessary.

She is putting on a good show. Too good, in fact, for someone who is mourning for her not dead daughter, and Shaw wonders if it's because she has done it before, back when she found out about her daughter's sociopathy. She seems to know exactly what face to put on so the people close to her won't suspect a thing.

"Okay Sameen, I need you to stay calm," Root mutters into the camera that's made it possible for Shaw to witness her own funeral. "Remember, this is your funeral. If you come out here, this will all be for nothing."

"What are—"

Shaw's jaw drop at the familiar voice that is greeting her mother.

"Mrs Shaw, I am so sorry for your loss," Cole says, offering a hand to her mother. "My name is Michael. I was Sameen's friend."

Her mother ignores the hand that Cole has offered, and pulls him into a hug. When she finally lets go of Cole, she tells him, "Sameen never talks about her friends, but she has mentioned you a few times. You two must be really good friends."

"Yes," Cole nods. "Once upon a time."

Her mother tilts her head at him. "Sameen was never good at keeping people who are close to her," she says, sending a apologetic glance at Root.

"Oh, no," Cole says. "Our falling out of touch was entirely my fault. "In fact," he looks straight into the hidden camera on Root's chest, "I am here to make it up to her."

 

 

 

"I'm alive, Maman," Shaw tells her mother, placing a plate with one of everything in front of her. "You should eat."

Shaw, Root and Cole are trying to reduce the amount of food in Mrs Shaw's house before they leave—there is still some food left from the post-funeral reception, plus the casseroles that people kept sending over—and hopefully entice her into eating something in the process.

"You don't have to worry about me," Mrs Shaw says. "Eventually, I adapt. That is what I do."

"I know," Shaw mutters. "But you still have to eat."

"Yeah," Cole says. "I know that casserole has a rep as boring food, but this chicken casserole is to die—" He cuts himself off. Root snorts, and Shaw sends the both of them a glare each. At least Cole has the decency to act regretful about it. "Sorry, bad choice of word. But seriously, Mrs Shaw, you should try it."

"Personally, I'm partial to the quiche lorraine," Root adds.

"Or," Shaw says. "If you don't want to eat any of this white people food, I could make you fesenjan."

She half expects her mother to reject her offer again, but Maman looks up to her and says, "Would you?"

"Sure," Shaw tells her mother. "I'll make some chelo too."

It's been a while since she has made anything Persian, not for lack of love but more because she doesn't have time for it. When you live by yourself, it's easier to find a few places with good food, and rotate through them. It saves on time, and the raw food that would inevitably sit in your fridge for weeks because you can't think of anything to do with it, or simply forgot about it.

Shaw doesn't look up from the stove when she hears the quiet rustle of feet into the kitchen. It's too light to be her mother's or Cole's. Even as Root approaches closer, she doesn't turn around, letting Root settle her hips just above her backside.

It's only when Root snakes her arms around Shaw's hips that Shaw tells her,

"We're at my mother's."

"It would be a bit naive on your mother's part if she thinks we haven't touched," Root replies. "And I don't think your mother is a naive person."

"Well," Shaw exhales. "There is a difference between knowing something and actually seeing it with your own eyeballs."

"Does it?" Root murmurs into her ear.

Shaw shudders. She hums, gently squeezing her way out of Root's embrace.

She can't remember what was it that she wanted to get when she reaches the kitchen counter. Casually, she heads for the oven where the walnuts are roasting, still not remembering the thing that she forgot. There is still about a minute left.

"What's up with you, anyway?" Shaw asks when she returns to the stove. "I thought you were all pissy about me telling Kelli and Reed about my leaving the city."

"Still quite a bit," Root says. "But considering the fact that we might not be able to see each other for some time too, I was hoping that we could set aside any ill feelings between us."

"Root," Shaw sighs. "I told you, I forgive you."

"I know," Root says. "That is why I was hoping to get a moment alone with you, but with the funeral and Cole…"

"Me too," Shaw admits, surprising herself. "I know I haven't said it, but it is important for me that you know—"

"You don't have to say it," Root offers. "We still have a little bit more time for you to decide if you really mean it. Maybe tonight?"

"Okay," Shaw agrees.

Root's feet pivot towards the door, but Shaw quickly grabs her hand.

"Do you mind helping me?" Shaw asks, letting go of Root's hand. "I, I need someone to stir the rice while I grind the walnuts."

Root smiles. "Then I am at your service."

 

 

 

Shaw closes the door behind her gently.

"Root," she whispers. She can't risk waking her mother up. That woman has the ears of a bat.

The lump on the bed doesn't stir.

"Root," she whispers more urgently as she approaches the bed.

Any other night, she would have just let Root sleep but this isn't one of those nights. She wanted to come earlier, but Maman didn't fall asleep until about half an hour ago, and Shaw had to make sure that she was really asleep before finding Root.

"Yes, Sameen," comes a voice from behind her.

Shaw has to shove down all the instincts that were drilled into her in spy school, and turn around without putting the person who had startled her into a chokehold.

"Can you not do that?" Shaw tells her. "We could have woken up my mother."

Root takes Shaw's hand.

"Come on," she murmurs and pulls Shaw out of the bedroom.

She leads Shaw to the backyard.

As she shuts the back door, Shaw asks, "What was that on your bed?"

"Stuff," Root answers. "But we're not going to talk about that. I know I told you to take your time, but I didn't know that I would have to wait until four in the morning to—"

"Yeah, Maman couldn't sleep," Shaw says.

"Is she okay?" Root asks.

"She will be," Shaw says and hopes that it's true. "It isn't the first time I've left her." She shrugs.

"Well, you're very hard to let go," Root says.

"So," Shaw tries to bypass the impending awkwardness.

She fails.

"So," Root echoes. "You wanted to tell me something…"

"About that," Shaw says, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants. "Thank you for giving me time to think about it."

Root lets out a wry laugh. "I have a feeling that I am going regret it."

"I don't know, honestly," Shaw exhales. "But here goes…"

The words don't come out.

"I think you should ask me," she tells Root.

"Ask you?" Root says, eyebrows drawn together.

"Anything," Shaw answers. "Ask me any question."

"As much as I am tempted to ask something inane," Root says, "I am far too curious to—"

"Root," Shaw warns. "Ask me before I lose my nerve."

"Okay," Root nods. "What's caught the tongue of the most fearless woman I know?"

The answer comes easy. "You."

"Why?"

"Because you're real."

"A lot of things are real, Sameen."

"But you are supposed to only exist in my dreams."

"And yet here I am, haunting your waking hours," Root says, a smile tinging one corner of her lips. "So how do you feel about that?"

"About…"

"About my hovering presence over your existence. Do you," Root takes a deep calming breath. "Do you want it to remain?"

"I think I might want to," Shaw answers.

Root chuckles. "See? How hard was that?"

"Is that…enough?"

Root smiles, tilting her head at Shaw. Eyebrows drawn together with incredulity.

"Of course," she answers. "More than you know."

Shaw leans forward, brushing her lips against Root's.

As the kiss deepens, she thinks to herself,

_Thank god I'm not really dead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for everyone who has stuck with this story for so long. I first published this over a year ago, and started sharing it way before that (I think maybe two years ago?). This is the first long project that I have stuck with until the end and I can't say that the amount of readership it gained was not a motivating factor for me to finish it. You all have had a helping hand in it and I hope this ending that I have delivered to you is satisfactory.


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